FINAL POST

             This semester I studied Chiam Soutine. He was a Expressionist that, toward the end of his life, leaned more toward Abstract Expressionism. For the final project I wanted to create something reminiscent of his work, but seen in a new way. He went through a couple of different phases. I of which was landscapes and another was panting the carcasses of animals. I used both of these phases to make my piece. I wanted to use a part of the animal that he did not paint, the fur. I also wanted to create a landscape that I was familiar with, the Appalachian Mountains. I wanted to use his techniques of thick lines to create my piece.
              For me, the focal point is red and then the eye should travel through the zig zags and to the blue on the bottom. I used small and large strokes with thick amounts of paint to create the fur like texture for the background. I wanted to use 3 different colors and techniques to look like 3 different animals. The color scheme I used was complimentary and compound. I used mostly muted colors like black, brown, and grey. But I also used red, blue, and whit to brighten it up.
              The connotative meaning of this is a little sloppy and muddy. The denotative is nature and bringing out a childhood memory of mine. When I was younger, I went on a camping/hiking trip to the mountains and I thought it was so beautiful. The Ideological meaning is really that the world and nature is beautiful and need to be preserved. It is really important to me that people preserve the environment.
       
               I think this class has really opened my eye to different perspective of art and how it can be interpreted in many different ways. I am a biology major and a lot of time my professors want me to create graphs that are new and exciting and I really think the data visualization can really help me in the future. The only thing I would change is laying out the schedule from the beginning. I know not having an exact layout makes it more flexible, but I really like knowing what I have to do when, even if it is really far in advance. Thank you for all of you criticism and praise to make everything the best it could be.  

"We live in a world where there is more and more information, and less and less meaning."

          For the denotative analysis I wanted it to be chaotic. The focal point is the man in the middle and then the eye goes around in a spiral out toward the words. I used the ink to mute the colors photo shop print out. Then I cut out some of the print out and glued it in color over top of the ink. This was used to make the cutouts pop out more. I wanted the ink to serve as a fog over the colors.

          For the connotative analysis, I chose this quote because it seemed to be really relevant to the direction the world is going. I feel as though everyone is so connected to social media and their phones. You go to a restaurant with people now and everyone is on their phones. I wanted to convey that through this piece. I wanted the viewer to see that we have completely lost the use of proper language. People now completely only use slang or abbreviations. I find myself, even in spoken language, only using the abbreviations and not the full words. We no longer use capitals or punctuation. We are always looking for a shortcut and don't want to do the work. It has even been seen that, in school, kids are having more and more anxiety when they do not have their phones so, in some schools, teachers are allowing their students to keep their phone on their desk, as long as they do not use it, so they still feel connected. This is why we have lost much of the meanings of our world.  

Light City

It was really cool to see this huge festival come to Loyola. I think my favorite piece was the foil in the box office. It sort of reminded me of a chandelier or a fire.

I like how the foil reflects the light and makes it bounce off the walls of the little hole in the wall. I really liked that it was sort of a smaller scale so it really makes you stop and look and see what is inside. I also really liked the "L" in front of humanities. The flashes of all of the different colors really caught my eye. I like that it showed Loyola Pride.

Postmodernism

INTRO

• In pre-modernism it was not uncommon to have never encountered someone who had differing beliefs or looks
• In postmodernism different is embraced
• Everything now is sort of mixed together
• artists--> not afraid to take a risk
• Realism--> bourgeois, historical novel
• Modernism--> dissatisfaction with the world
• Postmodernism--> dislocation and fragmentation of language communities
• blur of reality

JEAN BAUDRILLARD

• Disney allows you to simulate life
• Shows you what really draws people in
• Disneyland conceals the real America
• False reality

Frederic Jameson

• changes in composition is more evident 
• shoes--> status of the world
• Symbolic or raw material

                 

Kubler

In this article I found a lot of times in which I could connect my other classes to be able to understand his point more clearly. In the analogy about scientists not being able to discuss their research with one another because they were not in the same school of thought and how artists from different schools have completely different takes on things, I could really see what he was trying to say. I am a Biology major and I have taken a very wide range of classes. I have never taken a class in Neurology and I never plan to, but I love Microbiology. These are two very different types of Bio that do intersect at some points, however, if someone tried to talk to me about Neuro I would have no idea what they were saying. This is sort of the same with comparing artists from different eras and movements. They are doing and expressing very different thoughts and emotions. They are using different techniques and playing off different experiences.
I could also connect the collectivist identity. I think sometimes it is lost on people that the artist usually had an intention behind what they were doing. They knew what they wanted you to feel when you looked at their work. We spend a lot of time trying to figure that out. Sometimes with success and sometimes not. I think the most important thing is to try and relate to the piece as best as possible. You have to try to think about the emotions behind it and that is what brings us all together with it.

Data Visualization

This is a concept that I think I have always been aware of, but I never considered it in this context. I am personally a visual learner and a Biology major so when I am reading a research paper one of the first things I do is look for a graph or picture representation. But if you really think about it, what I am looking at is a visualization of the words on the page and I am drawn more and more engaged to the research now. This is what the video was saying. People are more interested when a visual is involved. They are able to understand and interpret better.

I really liked the cartography. The map of flight pattern was really cool because it looked like an outline of the United States, but it technically was not.

I also really liked how the data looked like it was moving. It looked like it was actually telling a story and made you want to learn more and look at it more. It does not look like it all has meaning, but when you put it into context it allows the viewer to really experience.

Whitescape

This is a white plastic bag in front of a white wall. The first image is just the regular overhead light. Seeing the 2 whites in this it is apparent that the bag looks a lot brighter while the wall almost looks cream. The second picture I added the flash of my phone and it made the wrinkles in the bag more noticeable while making the wall look even more of a cream.

Before and After

Ways of Seeing

It is really interesting to think of how much the invention of the camera has changed the idea and need for other types of art. Paintings were so important to be able to capture moments, however these moments are not organic. They have to be forced and posed while a photo can be more candid. A painting can really only be in one place at one time, but a camera can reproduce a photo in all different types of ways and sizes. Photos completely changed the way people see art and paintings. A paining can now be circulated all over the world. It kind of makes a painting lose its appeal and lure. 

You can also think about the idea of the photo circulating a painting as making the painting more relatable. Like the video says, we are looking at these paintings in our own world and our own setting. It makes something that was not meant to be relatable, relatable. 

It is actually a little sad to think about a piece of art completely losing its meaning after the invention of a camera. You no longer have to go to the art. The art now comes to you. In some ways it is no longer about the art. It is more about proving that the art is authentic. Because a camera made a piece of art reproducible, some of the magic is lost. But, for me, there is nothing like seeing a painting you have seen a picture of in person. I spent an entire year studying a painting in Spanish class in high school and when I got the opportunity to study abroad in Spain I got to see this art piece in person and it was such a different experience. I have seen it on paper 100 times, but when I saw the giant painting on the wall for the first time it was amazing.

Unlike what the video has said, I really do not think that the experience of art has been ruined by the camera. It was said that the meaning of art is now lost with the invention of the camera and it is unable to give the same affect it was originally intended to, but I think it has only enhanced the ability for people to be exposed to its meaning. Without painting replications there would be no way for someone to take an Art History class. You would be confined to your location. If you are not able to get to these places where the original paintings are hung there would be no way to study and apriciate a painting in a classroom setting. 

Baltimore Museum of Art

Last week we were lucky enough to take a trip to the Baltimore Museum of Art. While there we got t see a wide variety of 2D and 3D art pieces from many perspectives and eras of art. Usually. when I go to art museums I am drawn to more impressionist work like Monet, however this time I was more drawn to modern and more "crude" art pieces.  

 Chur by Sascha Braunig

This piece was in a room of a lot of other works that all seemed strange and like they did not really make a ton of sense, but art can be different to everyone. This kind of brings me back to this weeks lesson about lines. This is a bunch of lines that pattern out and make a brain in the middle. This is definitely more of a modern piece that I would not usually be drawn to, but I really liked this.

 View Overlooking Ceret by Chaim Soutine

This was one of the first paintings I saw when I was walking around that really caught my eye. I really like the thick lines and bright colors. I like that you don't really know what you are looking at and it takes a minute to actually understand. This is a landscape. At the top you have the dark sky, the middle is a group of zig zagged mountains, and the bottom is a river the goes through the mountain. At first glance you could probably argue that anyone could just throw some paint on a canvas and get this result, but I really like the little details and intricacies that make this so powerful. 

Still Life with Lemons by Georges Braque

I really liked this painting because of the lemons. They look so 3D even with the thick black line around the yellow. I like how simple the idea is and how lifelike the execution. I am also a big fan of the shading. Realism is not usually something I like because if is just like taking a picture, but I like this because their seemed to be an angle that made it more then just a bowl of lemons. These lemons are leaping off the page.

All in all, I really enjoyed the museum and I like that I found different styles interesting to me. I would definitely want to go back or branch out and try other museums and see other pieces that I have never seen. 

Visibility

I am not sure if I am interpreting this correctly, but I think Italo Calvino is trying to get across the notion that all things can be summed up into images. when you read something or hear something or even see something you can create an image in your mind that represents that to you. We are all born with an imagination. We have original thought and ideas and we all dream. All of this is images that we think about. In class we discussed our weeks. And we said that when we think about something in our past a flash of pictures of soundless scenes come to our mind. This is our mind showing us through images everything we can remember. This is an idea Calvino was talking about. This "real" recall could be mixed in with the imagination that Calvino discusses. Our imagination can warp and change and mold things into what we want them to be. Maybe you did not have the best week, but it does not mean that your mind cannot imagine a better one. You can also imagine a future and set goals. This ca all be stored in your mind as images. The imagination is a really interesting thing to have and can be the basis of a lot of thought processes in this course in creating some interesting art pieces.

Essentia

I attended the Essentia gallery in the student center. It was pretty cool to see what some of our peers have been working so hard on. I had never been to a gallery before, but I really appreciated being able to see there work and possibly be a source of inspiration for me since I haven't been in an art class in a really long time.

I really liked this piece by Rachel Yuhas. It sort of falls pretty well in line with what we are doing in class. Dots are the the most basic levels of art. This takes that notion to a whole other level. Her goal was to complete a circle with us coming from the stars and us wanting to go back to that. Each "dot" is a sort of planet in the universe. I really liked her thought process and how she really used the space she was given. Like the universe it looks never ending.

Can Art Change the World?

In reaction to Jerry Salz's "Whole Ball of Wax", I found it really interesting to think of art as a cat, as they do in the paper. Cats are not as open with their affections as dogs are. They are not as ready to give up their intentions like a dog. Cats need to be interpreted. Cats need to be analyzed more in order to really see what they are all about. It is the same way with art. Art is not just what you see in front of you. It is not just paint on a canvas or a clay on a table. And even still it, sometimes, is not even what is the easy conclusion. All art has a message. Some art is a little more literal then others, but there is a message. Like the paper says, it may not have the ability to change the world, in that it can end world hunger or stop climate change, but it can show the world what those issues could mean and get people to think about the world in a different way.

Take this image as an example. This photo was published by National Geographic magazine. This photo is a piece of art. However, this photo does not have the direct ability to change the world. It does, make people think about the climate change and see that it is real. They can see that something is wrong and it is time to make a change. Art cannot be the change, but it can cause the change.