Elmer Bischoff started out experimenting with surrealism and abstraction when he started as an artist, however he began to work figuratively in 1952. He was part of the post-World War II artists that experienced this switch from more abstract to more realistic work. After roughly 20 years of working figuratively, he returned back to abstract work full of color and light. He is most well known for his figurative work.
I came across his piece “Orange Sweater” (pictured below) in one of our art magazines while looking for some inspiration. Although his work is unrelated to what I’m currently making, a lot of it has similar elements to the work I used to make last year. Bischoff uses oil paint to make rough, fuzzy, and colorful paintings of different scenes and people. He uses wide strokes of paint and layers of colors to give the essence of a greater form or scene. I think part of what drew me to his work is that I miss doing my paintings where I studied spaces and tried to represent them with little detail. The cool thing about his paintings is that he paints on an incredibly large scale as opposed to my smaller paintings. This allows him to be more generous with his stroke and blocks of color. I wish I had found his work last year to give me inspiration, but now I’m more inspired to try and create more paintings like I used to. Alyssa Monks is an artist I stumbled upon while looking for inspiration for my new water-related pieces. Monks makes large, hyperrealistic oil paintings of people in water or people obstructed by wet and foggy glass. The biography of Monks on her website says that she “blurs the line between abstraction and realism by layering different spaces and moments in her paintings.” When I first read this I was incredibly intrigued because I have very similar goals for my own body of work. What was even more interesting to me is that our bodies of work may have similar messages but they look absolutely nothing alike. We use different mediums and I focus more on the abstract element of painting rather than her focus on the concept of abstraction. I can learn a lot from her though, including how she uses mark to make her paintings more expressive and texturized. Although I use a different medium, Monks proves that mark making is still an important part of any painting.
Monks has been working on her water series for 10 years, however she also does paintings that combine the images of figures and nature scenery. I noticed how she applies the same ideas of multiple planes of space and combines them into one beautiful painting. In some of her older work, she did paintings landscapes and scenes without a figurative element. I similarly used to do paintings of landscapes before I settled on my pool/bathtub path which I thought was interesting. Overall I’m in love with her work and I appreciate how she can still get the photorealistic effect while still having an expressive mark. The two articles I read both dealt with the idea of artists depicting the pain, suffering, loss, and tragedy that accompanies war. The first one, titled “Horror is a Constant, as Artists Depict War,” addresses the shift from paintings glorifying war to paintings that highlight the horrors of war. The second article, titled “When Modern Art Met Modern Warfare,” talked about the different forms in which art about war took on. Artists like to make art about subjects that get the viewer to stop, think, and feel something they may not have felt before. The topic of war is touchy for most people and is often ignored on a daily basis because it is devastating to think about. Artists take this idea of war and depict the very subjects that people are trying to avoid--death and mourning.
This trend of making art about the tragedies of war really took off around the time of the World Wars. Prior to these wars, war heroes were often painted to look like powerful and hopeful figures. These grand paintings overshadowed what really happened in the wars and drew people’s attention away from the real conflict. The first article mentions the fact that “. . .many artists focused on war at the behest of their governments or rulers. They were commissioned to show war’s achievements, but often, their eye caught something different” (page 3). Commissioned war paintings inevitably died down, which is likely why artists branched out and focused more on the bad parts of war rather than the ‘good’ parts of war. The second article discusses how as warfare evolved, so did modern art. The article uses an example from sculptor Jacob Epstein who completely changed his sculpture to address a new issue. Curator Paul Moorhouse said that “His art responds to his experience of war” (page 1) which is different for every artist who makes art about war. Another example of an artist is Kaethe Kollwitz, who focuses on the mourning aspect of war because she lost her son to the war. Her work was much more dramatic and somber because of her specific feelings and attitude towards war. I’m glad that artists are bringing light to something that many people like to shut out of their minds. War is an uncomfortably common thing in the world. Most people who are not immediately affected by it tend to forget that it’s even happening. By making work centered around this conflict, it makes people think more about why we are fighting in the first place. I don’t think anyone necessarily likes war but we tend to normalize it. Making people uncomfortable in this situation is a good thing. The world needs to realize that we should not celebrate war, normalize war, or forget about war. Artists are using their platforms and their work to make a well-needed statement about the state of the world. This is something that most other people are too afraid to do. One of my favorite things to google is 'artists who make ugly art'. The main reason for this is that I like seeing what everyone's opinion is on what ugly art really is. I frequently see articles that talk about artists who are challenging the typical ideals of beauty and one in particular talked about Laura Owens. The image that drew me in was on painting of random swipes of neon paint over a magazine article with a picture of Garfield the cat in the middle. My immediate reaction was not that the art was ugly, but that it was not particularly 'good' or interesting. I headed over to her website to see what the rest of her work looked like and I was shocked to see pieces that I actually liked. I definitely would not call her art ugly. It is messy but that is her intention (i'm assuming). I feel like I say this about most artists but I love her use of color. The first thing I'm drawn to in a piece is usually the color scheme and she understands color theory pretty well. Her work reminds me of work I have attempted to do in the past but have not executed well. I did not expect to like her art or be inspired by any of her pieces after researching her but now I want to go back and try making more abstract expressionist pieces.
This week I began working on the techniques I am going to be using on my home project. I'm still working with watercolor, however this time I am going to try and paint slightly more realistically than I painted my last piece. This gives me the opportunity to try and figure out where I want to be in between abstraction and realism without using class time to stress about it. The subject is going to be more of an object rather than a space.
For this awareness post I wanted to make myself aware of artists that are not known for their fine art, rather for their music or acting. This awareness post is about David Bowie because I recently found out that he also painted all his life. When I first saw his art I was shocked and amazed at how interesting and beautiful it is. His body of work feels very raw and focuses a lot on the human body. He frequently abstracts the body or emphasizes the proportions of certain parts. He also includes some animal motifs, most frequently being monkeys and horses. Some of my favorite pieces I have seen of his are his sketches. They are full page color drawings of people and shapes but the way he uses color and line captures his essence so well. His body of work seems to have unifying themes and appears developed which makes me sad that he was not more known for his fine art. Either way, I am glad I looked into his work and I am not inspired by his use of color and the expression in his work.
This quarter I went to a few different exhibitions but by far my favorite one was InLight! This was my third year going to it and each year has shown completely new and interesting works of art. My favorite part about the location of the festival this year was that there was art in between galleries that also had more art in them. So much art!!! The entire concept of creating a three day art installation based on the theme of light is so creative and fun and it has never once been boring. This year, many of the pieces were a lot larger because the spaces in between buildings and in parking lots were larger. I appreciated the mix of simple projections on walls and actual 3D glowing sculptures. There is a lot of participation in the festival including a parade down the middle of the street which I think is a really cool way to involve the public in an event like this. I liked the combination of light with other elements such as performance pieces and sound but my favorite pieces were the ones that played with color and the mixing of color. I hope in the future when technology evolves more there are more holographic pieces.
This week I finished my second Q1 project. It is a loose watercolor painting of a church with an interesting shadow on it. I was trying to achieve my goals from my last critique, including increasing the amount of negative space and playing with the way that watercolors naturally flow. I also used an interesting color scheme, mainly featuring orange, purple, and blue. I played with color in this piece as well because the colors in my last piece were all very similar.
The two readings for this quarter's seminar were focused around the theme of protest art. Protest art is art that has a message about a certain issue that an artist or a group of artists wants to address. These articles discussed the different methods that artists used to make their own kinds of protest art.
The biggest concept I explored when reading these articles was the effect of the kind of art or medium on how effectively the message was portrayed. In the article about Craftism, there is an example of inflatable cobblestones created by a the Eclectic Electric Collective and Enmedio for a protest in Barcelona. The large and reflective masses certainly attracted the public's attention, but how effective were they at getting their message across? Unless someone looked into the situation or asked what the piece meant, it is unlikely that they would have understood the meaning behind the piece. In work such as that of the Guerrilla Girls, the message is printed straight up on posters and images. Protest art in this media is more easily accessible by the general public and does not take much thinking to understand the artist's goal by creating the piece. However, a poster is not as captivating as a large inflatable cube. Which is more effective, something that is eye-catching or something that speaks the truth without hesitation? The second article about the Guerrilla Girls went into much more detail about the kinds of topics that protest artists are focusing on today. Most topics touched on dealt with issues such as the wage gap and other inequalities between the genders. The Guerrilla Girls aim to educate the public on injustices they probably did not know even existed. The members of the groups themselves once said "We want to be subversive, to transform our audience, to confront them with some disarming statements, backed up by facts -- and great visuals -- and hopefully convert them" (p. 7). They are not trying to get people riled up about a topic, rather they want people to care. The craftism article says that rights and freedoms were won by disobedience, but a lot of what the Guerrilla Girls do is simply state the facts. There are still so many ways artists can discuss certain issues, but how effectively they portray their message or how they captivate their audience may make a difference in how much support they will gain for that issue. |
AuthorGrace Barron Archives
June 2018
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