Final Project

The artist that I chose to study this semester was Gustav Klimt; two of his works that I focused on were Pine Forest II and The Kiss. For my final art project, I decided to incorporate these two artworks into each other in a contemporary style. From a denotative perspective, I see a background full of vertical lines that vary in texture, width, and color. The majority of the lines are made with paint, but others are gold ribbon and tissue and they create a bit of a chaotic feel. In the foreground, there are two elongated figures painted in pink and red, and one has gold ribbon hair. These figures are the focal point of the image, and break up the background and foreground. Below the figures is a textured white area created with paint. The connotative meaning of this painting appears to be a man and a woman–– the man is on his knees and seems to be begging for the woman's attention, while she stands much taller than him and looks away form him and he is faceless. The lines in the background seem to be a place that the woman and man are in, because the lines do not reach the bottom of the paper in the center, but instead meet what is the ground. The ground looks snowy, or it could be a cloud. Ideologically, this painting is a man and a woman in a forest. The trees in the forest are made up of various textures, mediums, and vary in size–– this is to represent the diversity in the world. The woman is clearly superior to the man in this painting. Her lavish dress, gold hair, and her stance represent the uprising of women in today's time. Her gold hair shows that she can make her own money and treat herself well without the help of the man below her, who she is ignoring. There is a cloud below them that creates a mystical or dreamy aspect. This is because women having this power used to be just a dream, and it still has a type of dreamy aspect to it because it is so surreal. This also creates the idea that the man could fall at any minute, as he is hanging off of the cloud. He no longer has the power that he used to have, and he has lost his identity completely due to his lack of a face.

Over the course of this semester, I have gained so much knowledge about the techniques, culture, and history of art. One skill that I am taking away from this class that is my ability to interpret and analyze a work of art. I now am able to look at an artwork and consider all aspects of it, including who the artist is, the mediums used, and the denotative, connotative, and idealogical meanings using the visual elements. This is a skill that I did not have before taking this course, as I would simply look at an image and only evaluate it by what I could literally see on the surface. This course could be improved by trying to use a wider variety of mediums to create artworks and by doing less photoshop. Overall, as a business student who does not know much about art, this was a great learning experience for me that I greatly enjoy.

Event

On March 23rd, I attended the Fractured Histories exhibit that featured ancient Greek pottery that was from the Allen Collection at Haverford College. This exhibit contained exquisite works of pottery with elaborate paintings on them. The work that I chose to focus on was the "Black-Figure Neck Amphora" which was attributed to the Leagros group. This pot, which was made with black slip and red clay, features women looking off to the side around half of the pot. Although the pot was decorated only in black slip, it is still visible that the women are dressed in elaborate clothing and head dresses. This makes me wonder what standing women had in this time period, or if these were just representing only the high-powered women. On the other half of the pot, there is a very curveular line that has floral-looking shapes on the sides and below it. I think that this continues to carry the feminine theme of the artwork and emphasize their beauty and relation to nature.

Post-modern Visual Analysis

This piece has a very clean look to it, with a cleanly outlined map of the United States that was done in black ink. There are several images on the page that are spaced out and allow the eye to travel. The outside of the image is painted in blue, while the inside remains white, creating emphasis on the center. The images overlap the borders of the map and are tilted at different angles. The majority of the work is made up of red white and blue coloring. The work has an overall bright look to it and is not over-crowded with images. The lines coming out of the tooth paste tube draw your eye horizontally across the bottom of the page. 

There is an overall very patriotic feel to the image because of the coloring and the images. Some of these images are more obvious than others. George Washington and Donald Trump are two very iconic and controversial characters that are known as images of the United States. The teeth, which are painted red white and blue are also very patriotic. The blue outside of the map seems to represent moving water because of its texture. This work creates the idea that America is place that focuses on images and uses familiar color schemes, such as red white and blue to attract buyers simply because of the familiarity.

The Shape of Time

In this article, I really enjoyed the analogy of art and artists being like a railroad–– we must take into consideration the railroad as a whole and cannot focus in on one specific part of the track or state in which the train travels through. In relation to artists this means that we must think about the entire art movement and the sequence of artists, because who came before and after each is very important. Timing is one of the big aspects of the fame of artists, because it was very crucial that their talent lined up with the era in which they lived. Later in the article Kubler writes, "the history of art abounds in examples of misplaced temperaments like the romantics wrongly born in periods requiring classic measure, or the innovators living in periods governed by rigid rule." This continues the point of the original analogy and shows that timing is a huge factor in the fame of artists and their works.

Data Visualization

I think one important point about data visualization is the basic principles of you, the reader, and the data. I can relate this to what I learned in marketing and advertising classes. There are several elements that go into an advertisement: there needs to be a creator behind the image who depicts what they feel will create the write message; the "reader" must also be considered because they are the reason that the image is being created; lastly the data must be successfully depicted, or the whole purpose is defeated. I like the quote "data is just a clue to the end truth" because it supports the fact that if the data is used correctly, we can interpret it ourselves and make a story out of it to find an end result. It was really important that the data visualization is that part of it is leaving it open to interpretation and part of it is not really knowing what you created- this is relatable to any art because the artist may see one thing that is completely unrelated to what the viewer may see. The artist shares their ideas and together with the viewer they may conclude from the content.

photo shop

Before:

After:

Magazine Ad

Ways of Seeing

One of the first points that John Berger makes is the differentiation between sight and touch. He writes, "We never look at just one thing; we are always looking at the relation between things and ourselves" (Berger 7). This differs from touch, in which we can only be in physical contact with a few things at once, but most times it will only be one or two things. This was the first realization that I came to when reading this article. Our eyes are working at a million miles a minute, always consuming everything around us,–– it is almost as if our eyes can detach from our body more so than anything else. When it comes to touch, we must physically bring our entire body to whatever we want to touch, which limits that ability immensely.
Hals's painting of the Regent with the slouched hat and eyes that are not focused suggests that he is drunk, when in reality it is very rare that that was the case at the time. "He argues that it was a fashion   at that time to wear hats on the side of the head . . . He insists that the painting would have been unacceptable to the Regents if one of them had been portrayed drunk" (Berger 15). This makes an important point about perspective and background information. Do we take Hals's word that the Regent was not drunk, or do we use what we see and draw our own conclusions? Because after all, vision is what we perceive.

BMA

Last Thursday, our class visited the Baltimore Museum of Art and we were asked to choose three of our favorite paintings. The three paintings that I chose were the two Shadow paintings by Andy Warhol,  Pine Forest II by Gustav Klimt, and the print Flayed Figured, Male, 3277 1/2 square inches by Jason Salavon. My favorite work was Pine Forest II because of the different ways I viewed it. As i approached the picture from far away, it looked like a large brown square with not much to it. As I moved closer, I began to notice the dark vertical lines that ran from top to bottom of the canvas and depicted the tree trunks. The green foreground that was made out of short, medium-width brush strokes created depth in what I now realized was a forest. There were countless tree trunks ranging in color from the darkest browns to colors of burnt orange and dark reds. I also noticed that off to the left side, between the trunks were speckles of light colors that appeared to be light shining through the trees. I also noticed that these specks of bright color were raised above the surface of the other paint and added another dimension and texture to the painting. I think that this was my favorite painting because of the way I was able to gradually discover more about it for the longer I looked at it. 

Visibility

This article about visibility was one that was very dense and full of information. I found myself needing to re-read each section or paragraph several times in order to grasp a strong idea on what was trying to be said. One of the points in the writing of Loyola Ignatius that caught my attention was that the point of departure and arrival are already established, but in-between the imagination is able to take over. I think that this relates to the idea that theres a starting point and a motive or destination in almost everything we do. When he says that this stories start with an image or a collection of images that the story weaves itself into the sequence of images.  I find this to make a lot of sense and relate to the way I tend to think, especially in the interconnection of things on two different levels. Although I had a hard time interpreting a few parts of this article, I was able to gain a few overall points and fragments of what the writer was trying to say.

The Whole Ball of Wax

This article presented an interesting and refreshing aspect of the role of art in our world both today and in past times. Like art itself, it triggered much thought about art's role on a grand scale and also in daily life. I like to think of art as a trigger, especially a trigger of thought. Works of art are incredibly stimulative to the senses, mind, and person as a whole. While an artist can attempt to captivate their emotions, reactions, thoughts or many other things in their work, he or she is also creating a chain reaction of inspiration, thoughts and feelings for any person who is given the opportunity to view their work.
I had a hard time understanding he cat and dog analogy that was used to describe art at the end of the article. I had an easier time relating to several other  points that Jerry Saltz made. I strongly agreed with the statement that art cannot drastically change large aspects of the world overnight, but rather that it will do so incrementally. I also enjoyed reading about how the furniture from the 70s and 80s eased the mans mind from his emotions of September 11th. The designer of that furniture had no intentions of that furniture ever being able to do such a thing for a person twenty or thirty years after its creation, but that is the power of art.