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.

Blog assignment 6 "Jasper Johns"

Diver by Jasper Johns. Since the marks are of Jasper Johns's feet and hands, it could be thought to be a kind of self-portrait. We think that the way in which he got his image onto the paper was to grease the hands and feet, imprint them, and then sprinkle charcoal on top. It has a very strange emotional tone and part of this, I think, is because of the gray, and the sense of internal light which comes up from the brown paper and the white chalk, the little touches of red and blue paint. Charcoal, pastel, and watercolor on paper mounted on canvas, two panels.

Blog assignment 6 "Jackson Pollock"

The Flame by Jackson Pollock. "On the floor I am more at ease, I feel nearer, more a part of the painting, since this way I can walk around it, work from the four sides and literally be in the painting." Agreed upon by many critics as one of the greatest painters in the United States in the 20th century, Jackson Pollock would devise a new art, free from brushes and easels, where his body and mind worked to produce an abstract image. It was his early studies in art that led him to his discovery and his influence can still be seen in America’s avant-garde art movements. Jackson Pollock was the first American abstract painter to be taken seriously in Europe. It was not until 1947 that Pollock began his "action" paintings, influenced by Surrealist ideas of "psychic automatism" (direct expression of the unconscious). Pollock would fix his canvas to the floor and drip paint from a can using a variety of objects to manipulate the paint.

Blog assignment 6 "Charles Burchfield"

In May by Charles Burchfield. Like many of his contemporaries, Charles Burchfield viewed nature as a source of revelation. Each season, every time of day, called forth a distinct mood that he wanted to capture and communicate through visionary forms. Burchfield wrote on the back of this painting in pencil, describing it as “an attempt to interpret a child’s impression of noon-tide in late May—The heat of the sun streaming down & rosebushes making the air drowsy with their perfume.”

Blog assignment 6 "Rembrandt van Rijn"

View of Amsterdam from the North West by

Rembrandt van Rijn. This landscape etching is of a recognizable view (but in reverse) of the North East of the 'St. Anthonis Poort, outside the old bastion de Blauwhoofd' (Hind, 1923). Buildings include the Haringpakkerstoren, the Oudekerk, the Montalbaanstoren, the East and West Indian Dockhouses, the Mill on the Blauwhoofd and the Zuiderkerk. Rembrandt had sketched the local landscapes but his etchings of the subject matter were a new departure between about 1640 and 1652. Differences in technique among his landscape etchings and drypoints suggest that, just as he sketched in situ, he may have sometimes sketched directly onto his copper plates in drypoint or with an etching needle.

Blog assignment 6 "Emil Nolde"

The servant by Emil Nolde. It was painted on Woodcut on thick tan Asian paper. Etching with stipple and tonal effects on wove paper. Emil Nolde added a special, mystical dimension to German Expressionism, and his career illustrates a number of the moral dilemmas which faced German Modernists of the first generation, since his instincts were nationalist and conservative even though his art was regarded as experimental from www.artchive.com.

Blog assignment 5 "Scale and Proportion"

Snow on Mount Fuji, porters climb uphill by Hokusai in 1836. Scale refers to the size of an object in relationship to another object. In art the size relationship between an object and the human body is significant. In experiencing the scale of an artwork we tend to compare its size to the size of our own bodies.Proportion refers to the relative size of parts of a whole. We often think of proportions in terms of size relationships within the human body. the mountain is what you can get the scale of the people and the ships in the water.

Blog assignment 5 "Visual Movement (Continuation)"

Madonna della Quercia by Raphael in 1519. Continuity in the form of a line, an edge, or a direction from one form to another creates a fluid connection among compositional parts. Raphael's value transition is dynamic. The parts of the highest value are left almost white, while the lowest value parts are painted almost black.  In order to dramatically express the high and low value, Raphael reduces the value variation of the midtones.

Blog assignment 5 "Contrast/Variety"

Lovers by Elizabeth Murray in 1996. contrast refers to the arrangement of opposite elements (light vs. dark colors, rough vs. smooth textures, large vs. small shapes, etc.) in a piece so as to create visual interest, excitement and drama. Variety is the quality or state of having different forms or types, notable use of contrast, emphasis, difference in size and color. Her works push the boundaries of a two-dimensional medium; the irregular triangles in the “Giant Maiden” series strain against the edges of canvases painted in high relief, while the explosive colors on an intricate collage-like canvas in Do the Dance (2005) lend the painting a kinetic, almost optical quality from artsy.net.

Blog assignment 5 "Repetition/Rhythm"

Child labor and a lack of education was one of the other reasons for people wishing to leave their homes by Jacob Lawrence in 1941. Rhythm can be described as timed movement through space; an easy, connected path along which the eye follows a regular arrangement of motifs. The presence of rhythm creates predictability and order in a composition. Repetition involves the use of patterning to achieve timed movement and a visual beat. This repetition may be a clear repetition of elements in a composition, or it may be a more subtle kind of repetition that can be observed in the underlying structure of the image. the figures and the baskets with the two repeating colors are what are reoccurring.  

Blog assignment 5 "Emphasis"

Heliogabal by Anselm Kiefer in 1974. Emphasis is a principle of art which occurs any time an element of a piece is given dominance by the artist. In other words, the artist makes part of the work stand out, in order to draw the viewer's eye there first. I think the first focal pint is the sun in the middle but then your eyes move to the word in the back drop. there is even times when my eyes move to the cloud right above the sun. 

Blog assignment 5 "balance"

A rainy day in Boston by Childe Hassam in 1885.  Asymmetrical balance art is when both sides of the central axis are not identical, yet appear to leave the same visual weight. It is a "felt" equilibrium or balance between the parts of a composition rather than actual. from the women and child the balance is to there right I think and the other on is the building in the back of the is the other balance point.