Blog assignment 7 "Walker Evans Instant Collage"

Gasoline Station, Reedsville, W.Va. by Walker Evans.  Entering the active field of American photography at the end of the 1920s, Evans was confronted with the two dominant modes of the moment, the "artistic" posture of Alfred Stieglitz and what Evans considered the blatantly "commercial" approach of Edward Steichen, both positions rejected by Evans in favor of, in his own words, "the elevated expression, the literate, authoritative, and transcendent statement which a photograph allows." In other words, he looked for something more than the esthetic or the commercial aspects of photography. He aimed for visual statements alluding to stories and values beyond the literal or the artistic.

Blog assignment 7 "Jerry Uelsmann's Manipulated Photography"

Beginnings by Jerry N. Uelsmann. Jerry Ulesman started experimenting with photography at a young age, and later received a master’s degree in the art form. He composed all of his images by combining multiple negatives together, to create one image. He was the first of his time to use this technique this creatively. A lot of work goes into each and every print. After taking multiple images, he utilizes several enlargers for his negatives. If there is one major rule of composition and design that this photograph lacks, it’s leading lines and symmetry. Uelsmann’s work is very abstract, and the eye is forced to bounce around the image. Although, this does not make the image bad, because I always believed that there is no solid rules in photography. 

Blog assignment 7 "Nam June Paik Video"

Technology by Nam June Paik. Its made of 25 video monitors, 3 laser disc players with unique 3 discs in a cabinet of various materials. Nam June Paik endeavors to humanize technology and electronic media, a pursuit evident throughout his prolific, complex, and visionary career. He champions technology’s powerful potential to foster interactivity within our increasingly global society. Paik’s writings of nearly 40 years ago demonstrate his prescient awareness of the significance of TV, satellites, and rapid interactive communication well before advances in computer technology and the creation of the Internet. Paik recognized that TV’s pervasiveness renders it almost invisible; he sought to create alternatives to TV’s capacity to lull, to entertain, and to make passive consumers of its audience. He set out as an artist to demystify the medium, and in doing so, he transformed the video image into a tool capable of redefining the parameters of sculpture and installation art this is from the international sculpture center.com. 

Blog assignment 7 "Andy Goldsworthy Earth Art"

Sidewinder; view from the road by Andy Goldsworthy. Andy Goldsworthy, a non-traditional sculptor, was born in Cheshire, England in 1956 and raised in Yorkshire. Currently, Goldsworthy resides at Penpont, Dumfriesshire, Scotland.

Goldsworthy's art encompasses both ephemeral and permanent characteristics of change. Goldsworthy states: I have become aware of how nature is in a state of change and how that change is the key to understanding. I want my art to be sensitive and alert to changes in material, season and weather. Often I can only follow a train of thought while a particular weather condition persists. When a change comes, the idea must alter or it will, and often does, fail. I am sometimes left stranded by a change in the weather with half-understood feelings that have to travel with me until conditions are right for them to reappear.

Blog assignment 7 "Louise Nevelson Assemblage"

Atmosphere and Environment X by Louise Nevelson.

An American born in Russia, Nevelson worked primarily in wood to create shadow-box reliefs, considering herself an "architect of shadow" and an "architect of light." The 21-foot structure near Firestone Library was her first monumental outdoor sculpture in Cor-Ten steel, becoming the first of a series of steel sculptures she made in the '70s. Recently, conservation was done to preserve the colors of rust and black. The earliest woman artist to try her hand at assemblage was Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven, the Dada Baroness. In addition, one of the earliest and most prolific was Louise Nevelson, who began creating her sculptures from found pieces of wood in the late 1930s.

Blog assignment 7 "Michelangelo Carving"

Drunken Bacchus by Michelangelo Buonarroti in 1498.

 Its made of Marble and height 203 cm. At the age of 21 Michelangelo went to Rome for the first time. We still possess two of the works he created in this period (Bacchus and Pietà); others must have been lost for he spent five years there.

The statue of Bacchus was commissioned by the banker Jacopo Galli for his garden and he wanted it fashioned after the models of the ancients. The body of this drunken and staggering god gives an impression of both youthfulness and of femininity. Vasari says that this strange blending of effects is the characteristic of the Greek god Dionysus. But in Michelangelo's experience, sensuality of such a divine nature has a drawback for man: in his left hand the god holds with indifference a lionsksin, the symbol of death, and a bunch of grapes, the symbol of life, from which a Faun is feeding. Thus we are brought to realize, in a sudden way, what significance this miracle of pure sensuality has for man: living only for a short while he will find himself in the position of the faun, caught in the grasp of death, the lionskin, from the web gallery of art.com.  

Blog assignment 6 "Robert Rauschenberg"

First Landing Jump by Robert Rauschenberg. Cloth, metal, leather, electric fixture, cable, and oil paint on composition board, with automobile tire and wood plank are all in this work. "There is no reason not to consider the world as one gigantic painting," Rauschenberg said. He composed First Landing Jump from a rusted license plate, an enamel light reflector, a tire impaled by a street barrier, a man's shirt, a blue light bulb in a can, and a black tarpaulin, as well as paint and canvas. Jasper Johns coined the term "Combine" for such works, which he described as "painting playing the game of sculpture." Though the taut metal coil alludes to the motion of the parachute jump referred to in the title, and the light bulb is lit with electricity, in their second lives these items are divested of their original purpose and fixed into the work of art.