Blog 7- Non Western

The piece I chose was a panel from a larger mural done by Jose Clemente Orozco depicting “The Epic of American Civilization”. Jose Clemente Orozco was one of the most prominent artists during the Mexican Mural Movement who believed strongly in people being accessible to art in many forms.  I suppose its sort of ironic that the panel I chose is titled “Ancient Human Sacrifice” when the piece has the word “Civilization” in it, but the art aspect of it is much more than I thought it would be. I was surprised by the expression on the face of the man being sacrificed, it’s a serene smile he wears as 5 other men and a larger ‘being’ in the background hold what appears to be a hatchet to his throat. The man doing the actual act is wearing a green mask while the others have masks or facial paint except for the man being sacrificed. What I like the most about this panel is the definition of their arms where every muscle is shown in detail.

This piece is being stored at Dartmouth College to be displayed to many.

Shock in Chalk!

For my contemporary virtual art exhibit, I chose: “Shock in Chalk!” as a theme (more about the fact that it rhymes than an actual shock factor). Many street artists who use chalk as the main tool have the ability to give the illusion of depth in their pieces, and this is frequently done through using a projection technique called anamorphosis. Two such artists are Julian Beever and Kurt Wenner.

Julian Beever is an English chalk artist based out of Belgium. Specializing in three dimensional sidewalk drawings, he has been creating breathtaking pieces as a freelance artist since the mid 90’s. His whimsical topics and use of live people (including infants and children) draws in an audience of all ages.

“Meeting Mr. Frog” is one of his most known 3-D creations. I personally love his incorporation of the child reaching out towards a giant frog. The Lillie pads surrounding them are a beautiful color in contrast to the blue-green water on the black-top.

His “Batman and Robin” piece is a particularly good example of his 3 dimensional abilities and how he (literally!) throws himself into each piece he draws and uses a modern topic to draw interest from young crowds.

In Beever’s “That Hemmed in Feeling” he uses different shades of beige to show shadows and depth in creating the illusion of a pit with people drawn crawling out in addition to a viewer crouching outside the pit.

One of my personal favorite techniques Beever uses is mirror imaging. While it is easily done on a canvas, chalk poses a different challenge: drawing and posing for your own self-portrait at the same time. Below is “Self Portrait of the Artist with Liquid Refreshment”

Street Artist Kurt Wenner has a different take on sidewalk art in chalk. While equally shocking, the subject matter is drastically different than those of Julian Beever. Mostly he draws historical pieces of the Renaissance, not copying the work of others but interpreting it in his own way through visual illusions and chalk. He learned how to do this at an early age: starting with his first commissioned mural at the age of 16 and continuing on to Rhode Island School of Design followed by Art center College of Design. He worked for NASA for several years before selling all of his belongings and moving to Italy to study art. His love of chalk in art and years of school paid off when his pieces were featured in several magazines, newspapers and TV shows.

“Perseus”, 1991 Kennedy Centre in Washington D.C.

the masterpiece “Babel” draws many excited viewers in 2007.

although the two artists have vastly different styles, their common technique of illusion in chalk without question is delightfully shocking.

Jaime’s Blog about Impressionism

To Love or to hate an art style such as Impressionism both seem too extreme of descriptions for how I view it, maybe indifference would be better.  I do not see Impressionism as special enough to pay a lot of attention to when there are so many other styles that just knock me over with creative shock.

I find myself much more impressed with artwork that has a lot of detail and the longer to you look at a piece, the more of a story unfolds and the more you find in it. Perhaps it’s the “where’s Waldo?” book loving child in me, but finding hidden objects and hidden meanings seems like the most fun part! Like, in Van Eyck’s Wedding Portrait titled Arnolfini Marriage, Bruges,  I feel like I could look at their facial expressions and body language for hours (okay, maybe 10 minutes at least) and wonder why they look so grim in a wedding portrait? What conversation just took place to make them so bummed?

Or even better: I was psyched to find out that there is more depth to fruit basket paintings than just needing something still to paint! The background I found out drove me to go back and examine each one to find the bugs which I overlooked the first time and really soak in the message the painter was getting across. This feeling makes me feel like Tom Hanks in the Di Vinci code, and unfortunately Impressionism does not give me this feeling.

When I read the description of Impressionism I was excited to get started looking at some paintings, and while the descriptions supplied in this course were not incorrect, I was mislead into thinking they would look like the Rococo style which I loved so much. I found the Impressionism pieces (while colorful and upbeat), to look blurry when you look close… and looking closely is my favorite part. Claude Monet’s painting, Rue Montorgueil, Paris, was so blurry in fact that it made me inclined to pull back further or remove my reading glasses, but it still wasn’t enough detail for me.

Don’t get me wrong, not all paintings have to be really deep with a hidden meaning for me to like it. As long as I look at it and it makes me smile, or take a deep breath, or wish I were in the same room painted, that’s good enough for me. The Rococo style is the one that really did that for me. Perhaps not all the portraits, but the Rococo architecture gave me a detailed look at elaborate and exotic things which I will probably never experience firsthand. Elisabeth-Louise Vigee-Le Brun’s The Artist and Her Daughter, Russia, made me wish we lived in a time where I could wear silk scarves on a daily basis and made me smile. Seldom has an Impressionism painting made anyone wish they had a fan or a fancy vanity with decorative brushes and perfume with a puffer handle and comfy foot stool.

JaimeHasABlog… but has no idea HOW to blog.

Hello!

My name is Jaime and I have no idea how to blog (group responds together: Hi Jaime!). I suppose that isn’t entirely accurate. The detailed step-by-step instructions provided have shown me HOW to blog, it’s the intended content of this first blog that escaped my attention. An introduction perhaps? I’ll do my best:

I moved to Fairbanks after graduating from Rio Americano High School in Sacramento California back in 2005. My Zodiac sign is Leo, and I like to spend my time watching movies and cuddling with my Beagle named Bleeker. Bleeker is a sensitive and high maintenance pet, but he is also a very good listener and rarely interrupts when I’m speaking.

I am not very artistic at all, although I frequently wish I was. In my ceramics class in High School all of my pieces blew up in the Kiln and I spent most of my time reading the newspaper we laid down to cover the table. I LOVED theatre class, however, and considered myself particularly good at playing “the bad guy” roles. Well, I really hope I included the information I was supposed to, if not I’ll be writing another blog shortly.

Cheers!

Blog Assignment 1 by Jaime

the visual art piece i chose was the Dome of Santa Maria Del Fiore by Filippo Brunelleshi. The dome construction began the summer of 1420 and was finished by 1436 in Florence.

What i found so appealing about the work was that it was such an original solution to the “how-to” problem many puzzled over: how to put a dome on the cathedral. what made this achievement even more impressive was the mind behind it: an ill-tempered slightly unbalanced genius who was the underdog. The whole situation came off as if: a rich investor asked a homeless guy off the street (who the rich guy saw potential in, for some reason) to be the architect, engineer, and construction worker for a centerpiece of the town which other accredited architects had failed in.  in this situation, the “rich investor” was the Medici Family (more specifically, Cosimo de’ Medici). They took a HUGE chance financially supporting this guys ideas which were unheard of until this point. His use of animals, pulleys, and watered down wine to keep the workers sober and safe today seem like pretty obvious solutions, but back then it was all new. Its no surprise that townspeople crowded to watch and help, because it was clear that it would be a dome picturedome picturetremendous failure or its success would define Florence.

Brunelleshi’s sketches alone were breathtaking and mathematical solutions were so far before his time, but the end result of the Dome of Santa Maria Del Fiore would be enough to bring you to tears (if you were the sappy, crying at artwork type, i guess…). I really liked how he merged new ideas of how to construct the dome with greek columns used in ancient times. While such revolutionary ideas (such as the birth of Linear Perspective and rings of brick in the dome) tend to scare people with investments in it, Cosimo de’ Medici embraced the new ideas and in the end, the Medici Family, Brunelleschi, and Florence triumphed because of the genius, beautiful, revolutionary dome.