Art Gallery Visit #2

The title of the exhibit was Burchfield Exhibit! This gallery was way different from the first one that I went to at Albright-Knox art gallery. It was more open and very spacious compared to the other one. This one also had concerts and shows with auditoriums. At the Albright-Knox it was mostly paintings but REALLY colorful. One thing that stood out in this exhibit was the music. It was this eerie, gloomy music that played pretty well with the theme.

It was mostly all the same colors and layout. The floor was very spacious. Sometimes there would be random sculptures or paintings in the middle of the floor that you have to be careful about. The lighting was dim, of coarse so it wouldn't ruin the paintings. At this one there was no security guards that would yell at your or constantly breathe behind your neck. They politely asked us to take pictures without flash. One of my favorite and VERY unique thing was on the top floor there was this machine that was made of motion sensors and every time you move, it controls the water dripping down. I am really into technology and was fascinated by this. I had most of my fun in this machine.

The artwork was properly organized according to the exhibits. There were several but I forgot to take pictures. There were similar to watercolors and acrylic paintings but very different from Albright-Knox. I realized at Albright-Knox it was VERY colorful with bright colors and the paintings would stand out at you. Another unique thing about the Burchfield was that there were some comments box or places you can write about how you were thinking at that specific spot or painting.

The first one that stood out for me was Ultima Cena by Stephen F Saracino. Now this was clearly similar to the Last Supper with Jesus. But it was really interesting how it depicted the Last Summer with these animal. There was balance in this picture and shows quite a symmetry. The next artwork I selected was this wonderful photo from Patti Ambrogi. This was a photo made up of many small photos. I thought this was very neat! It shows contrast and was remarkable! The final artwork was The Forest Through the Trees from Hillary Fayle. This is a great example of proportion. It depicts a forest through a small leaf. I thought it was fantastic yet ironic.

Video for Module 11

I watched videos for Matisse and Picasso. The second video that I watched was about the Mystical North for Spanish art. It's ideal how the world's famous cathedrals and buildings actually was influenced by art and great artists.

Drawing is painting with less materials according to Matisse. Paris was a great place for Matisse for his painting that is to say for his life was a man who needed to take risks. Matisse has two passions, the female node and fabrics the silks and velvets. For Matisse painting always meant, panic, struggle and fear. He used to try to deliberately instigate the struggle by setting up little visual tableaux. Matisse always had a model. He would be on the model, in the model and very inspired by models. It gives you a very particular vision of the model if you are so close. In fact it's a deformation almost like a fish eye vision. When you literally draw something from your lap, your vision is different from how it would be if you just took a few steps back from it. Matisse needs models because it serves to fix his attention and it has a relay action.

Picasso comes across this and makes fun of Matisse to provoke him. He was actually awarded Nobel Peace Prize. He doesn't travel or need tourism like Matisse. Picasso says "To me to paint a picture is to engage in a dramatic action in the course of which reality will be disengaged." He also says that dramatic action need solitude. Perhaps it happens at night as close as possible to the unconscious mind. Picasso does not use palettes or easels which is very interesting. He uses newspapers that are laid out on the floor. Lots of paintings from Picasso are objects that never existed. Picasso's inspiration comes from first and foremost life, women are the engine that drives him. Female mystery is the greatest subject.

After Goya finished the black paintings, his sight deteriorated to the point he could barely see. Within five years he was dead. He may have lit the fuse of modern art. It wasn't till t he start of 20th century that Spain became one of the power houses for modern art. Spanish modern art would be forced out of the friction between two opposites. This includes modern Atheism and ancient religion. Antoni Gaudi's style is organic and sinous and it was inspired by God's Natural World. Gaudi was a man who clung to Spain's Catholic past. He created the Cathedral in Barcelona. It is called Sagrada Familia. Gaudi saw himself as God's architect. It was God that he looked for inspiratio.

Dia De Los Muertos

In the beginning before I started to brainstorm ideas and find out how I can make a mask, I thought wow it must take really a miracle to come up with an idea. Every time I work on these projects I expand my limitations more and more, above what I think. I started off with the theme of Halloween and I'm pretty sure people started exactly the same place as me. When I thought of Halloween it automatically reminded me of the Day of the Dead. It is very popular and people should've heard of it. It the day when you celebrate the deceased. It is a really cool part of the Latin culture.

I started to google some pictures of the day of the dead, and automatically a mask pops up and I realized this was my project. I started to look at youtube videos and more images to start constructing my mask. I came up with these images from google which I downloaded. There are lots of pictures with flowers and flower petals with crosses. All the masks seemed pretty friendly to me and very comical. It wasn't too scary. I had to begin with the outline of a skull and that's where I started to work up the foundation.

I implied elements of texture and color and the principle of balance. It is nicely symmetrically designed. I used acrylic paint, leftover from previous projects. I tried to imply almost a similar theme with flowers and crosses with a skull. It then end it came out great! I had a really good experience with this mask, but I wish I worked on it earlier so I could've taken it around during Halloween. 

African Art

I watched both videos on African Art. It was very interesting. There were so many similarities between African Art and art from other countries. I liked both of these presentations because it let me feel I was in the museum looking at the statues and sculptures the way these people were describing it. You usually think African Art as static but a specific sculpture had a twisted back, turned all around and you could feel the notches of his spine and the tongue that was sticking out. African art that affected the west is more abstract, simple and dramatic, startling and exaggerated. Above all African Art packed an emotional wallop. It gives a way of psychological form to the human form or to any other figures or to a scene they wish to depict. Most common magical art objects were masks. For example there is a mask with two sides: white and black. The white side depicts a healthy person. The black side is the side of illness, we can see small posts which are victims of small pox. Masks were designed to scare us, but some didn't work and the Boas stopped making them. One of the groups that were made to scare is the Westerners. Rubber and Ivory was popular at the time in Congo when King Leopold was in power. The king wanted it out fast and sent soldiers to make sure that it happens. At the time bullets were very expensive and every time soldiers used it, the king wanted proof that it was used properly. The only time when bullets were used was when the slaves had a deadly disease and bullets were use to prevent from extending the disease any further. The soldiers would sometimes miss and hit another animal. Then these soldiers would sever the right hand off of natives in order to compensate for the bullet that was used. The nature of existence is what Art is about. Art is part of daily life in African culture. This is similar in our culture also. A strong aesthetic sense is revealed in the decoration of traditional homes and in the making of everyday utensils. It finds expressions in dress, hairstyles and other forms of ornamentation. Art was always important in traditional rituals. Many masks in museums were once used in ceremonies that combined artistic creations with sounds of music and dynamic power of dance.

Drawing of My Hands

This project definitely failed me. I didn't do this drawing correctly. It was impossible for me to draw or sketch my hand. I absolutely gave up. But then I had another idea. I traced out my hand so I have some kind of foundation for me to work on. Then I worked out on my shadows then the fine details such as my knuckles. I used a pencil for this project and a whole lot of erasing. It was VERY difficult to draw with my left hand, which is my non dominant hand. With this little cheat it did come out pretty well. I don't know if this counts or not. I would NOT consider using my non dominant hand to work on artwork in the future. My knuckles were also a very complicated piece because I had no idea how to sketch it out. I did some research to how other hands came out and it seemed that a lot of shadowing going on.

Velázquez & Image of a Master

It is inspiring how these artists started when they were pretty young. Some were well known of ever since 16 years old. I was interested in both these videos because it shows how much potential any one can have. The video with Albrecht Durer was well known for his drawing of his hands, which we are actually doing for this module.

Velazquez when he was 24 he started being a court painter for Philip IV. He started painting when he was way younger though. His painting, Order of Santiago conferred his nobility. He captured the moment which includes the light, air and other elements that disappear in a trice not because they are fleeting but because they are timeless. The worst art is his had no friends except only one which was the king. He had only one love who was his wife. His consuming interest was painting, and this was his friend, lover of literature and patron of the arts. It is incredible how talented you can be but I wouldn't want to live all my life to have just very limited amount of friends and paint forever in my life. Velazquez was a man of good character not very interested in government. The king guaranteed his livelihood and his future as a painter. When Velazquez painted he was free of artistic compromise or unwanted commissions. Velazquez basically painted what he wanted to paint. Velazquez always saw the king as eloquent, speaking not with his lip but with work. When he was on his trip back to Madrid, he painted Mythology Forge of Vulcan. For Velazquez the life mattered and not myths. Velazquez painted slowly and was very educated.

Albrecht Durer was born in 1471. He exercised a powerful influence on the art of Northern Europe. He was very talented, and performed a self portrait at age 13. He loved painting hands, which connects to what we have to do in our module for this class. Durer examined the process of aging carefully. For example, the ruthless eye of paintings determines the process of aging. There was some scrutiny of narcissism which was an art of scrutinizing his own face. After he visited to the Alps he discovered the art of landscape. Durer was the first true landscape artist in Europe. Durer was asked for an altar piece for their chapel inside the church. The theme was the virgin angels that distributed garlands of roses to rulers of church and state. Durer always had something to learn. From the Venetians, he learned how to employ the first brushstroke without color to achieve the effect of solid form simply with light and shadow. The painter examines his model through a grid then transfers each detail onto sheet of paper scored with the same grid. His search was the perfect form possessed by the Ancient Greeks and since lost. An example of this was his own self portrait.

More Human than Human & A World Inscribed

I was able to look at the subtitles for these videos and were easier to understand. I was able to stop copy my notes down successfully and play it again!

For the first video, More Human Than Human

It was quite interesting for me to figure out why art was around for such a long time. It began way before I was born myself. Images make us how to think, how we feel and they mold and define us. They are very highly influential to humans. You see certain types of images that helps promote advertisements. We see it in T.V and definitely around our surroundings. They have such a powerful hold on us. What these whole images have in common is a human form. This type of form is primary.

In this video, it uses an example of a gull chick. As soon as they are hatched their brains are stimulated not by the mother gull, but actually the red stripe on its beak. There was an experiment done using a stick with one stripe to see if these gull chicks would notice it. Certainly they did! There were more experiments done including a stick with multiple red stripes and sure enough they were even more stimulated and excited over this stick with three stripes than only one. There is an analogy here with the Venus sculpture with emphasized on the hips and the breasts.

The brains of the hunter and gatherers of the Venus producers exaggerated what mattered the most. They were living in the Iced Age, so features of warmth and fatness were highly desirable so their brains compelled them to exaggerate these features above others.

Egyptians were first settled humans to use images of the body extensively in their Art. The bodies don't have exaggerated features at all. All arms and feet were about the same size. Each part of the body was at the clearest angle. There were red grid lines that were found in a tomb which covered the entire body. Researchers analyzed this Grid recording numerous details. The figure was 19 squares tall and the feet were two and half squares long. The pupil of the eyes were one square off the center line. This whole concept was very important to the Egyptians. The Pyramids were designed with absolute precision which is a symbol of order that had risen from the desert.

The second video that I watched, A world Inscribed,

describes how hard of a Monk's life was. At that time there were the local lord who offered protection and different monasteries where the monks produced most of the books. Very few people knew how to read and write and was an extraordinary skill at the time. Monks were producing bibles to spread the work. But this spread of knowledge was slow and each book was written by hand. Average monastery had only 20 books. Spelling mistakes and errors corrupted the texts after many centuries. Letters would look like other letters, there were ink blot and caused the writer to leave out a line or paragraph.

Shortly after, literacy was needed for social development. Universities sprung up where students shared their bible and took notes together. This way multiple of books were copied at once.

Its really hard to imagine living at a time like this, where there are only shorthand of books. This tells us that knowledge is actually a gift to us. The ability to read and write is incredible. Without this ability we wouldn't be able to learn about the past at all!