week 6

 What’s the point? Research in various modes and reflect on learning and development 

CONCEPTUAL THEORETICAL PRACTICAL

What do I fear in my work and Why?

I fear that my work will seem childish and without intention or depth. Less that my work is misunderstood, more that it is poor and missing the greater picture. I fear that I won’t be showable and that no one will ever view or want to view the work. I fear I wont find/navigate the pathways to show others.

What is the point of Art?

As an artist it is fulfilling your waking everyday creativity and questioning driveforce.

For the viewer, to show something we haven’t noticed before or confirming something that we did.

Who would I share an exhibition space with an why?

Liz Major because her work just fits. She questions our connect and disconnect with stuff and I am constantly curious about this.

Art College?

So I can understand how to be and feel a fully rounded artist. To have my eyes opening to methodologies, ideas, theories etc. And also to understand the career/working role of an artist rather than simply making stuff.

Discuss Paula Rego’s use of light and shade and use of space in the painting. Why and what does it do?

The lovers are in their private space dancing in the moonlight. Although is it the moonlight and we can see them. The lady to the left is in whiter light and darker shade so she appears disconnected specially from the group. Where is her partner? Is this what she is contemplating, she is spaced out, her gaze away from us, recalling a memory or person? The man in the suit glances at another - is it this woman - were they lovers - His dancing partner is cross, who are you looking at, bring your eyes back to me. Each group appears in a private space, no one considers the viewer. A melancholic scene. The artist plays with the rules of nature with shadows and lighting not fitting with the moonlight. 

Do women have to be naked to get into the met?

Guerilla girls de-personalise women so they can represent women as a whole. Using our cultural understanding of the representation of women in art for their purposes. The masked nude becomes a guerilla girl.

Mark Tansey painting

Native Americans, meet Africans, in a snow storm or sand storm. Muted palette helps with the narrative of confusion of landscape. Movement and yet a stillness. Meeting of two tribes, across cultural terms and environmental terms. 

Bertrand Lavier

Material quality is wrong, for these normal items, painted in normal colours. Artist is questioning what is real, and the illusion of paintings. Questioning our learnt perception. 3D painting.

Nedko Salakov

Performance - blacking out the white, whiting out the black, but which? Negative and positive space. Question of authorship - is the artist painting, who is painting, who is ‘winning’, how will the space be left, is it a fight.

Lucien Freud and Rembrandt Self portraits 

Both presenting as the artist. Autumnal hues - the autumn of life. Sense of mortality, presenting the old man. The rich old man who seems poor? The poor old man who seems rich?

Picasso Les Demoiselles d’Avignon - Why is it so special

Reference to masks (the primitive). Direct and brazen portrayal of prostitutes. New style, breaking down the figure and background. Breaking down the conventions of painting. Fruit is suggestive of what we can’t see from the seated woman. Not faithful representation of the figure.

Moma: flat planes, angles/jagged surface, compressed space, brothel scene. Boldly confronts the viewer, pictorial conventions are banished. Anthropology. 

My work. What does it do? What is its purpose? How will it move forward into new work or ideas?

Quilting Reading again...!