Historical Context

Banksy (unknown title and lifespan) 2016

 

Historically speaking, I think this piece discusses how social status plays out in modern times. Social status is largely based off of an individuals’ online presence and in a time where social media dominates the communication world, it is hard to escape the effort of putting yourself online. I think this piece speaks to the many people that struggle to stand out not only online but in the real world as well. I think it is a humorous yet accurate depiction of how being ignored through any social situation makes one feel inferior and useless. But in the historical context of this piece, it is representing how iconic symbols of modern times define one’s social status due to the fact that everyone is online.

What do you think this piece is saying about modern communication?

Portrait of the journalist Sylvia von Harden

Otto Dix (1891-1969)

Portrait of the journalist Sylvia von Harden (1926)

Otto Dix was born in Untermhaus, Germany December 1891 and died July 1969. Dix volunteered for the German Army during the First World War. He earned the Iron Cross (second class) and reached the rank of vizefeldwebel. In August of that year he was wounded in the neck and was discharged from service in December 1918. Dix was affected by the sights of the war, and later described a recurring nightmare in which he crawled through destroyed houses. He represented his traumatic experiences in many subsequent works drawing attention to the bleaker side of life, unsparingly depicting prostitution, violence, old age and death.

In 1959, von Harden wrote an article, “Erinnerungen an Otto Dix” (“Memories of Otto Dix”), in which she described the genesis of the portrait. Dix had met her on the street, and declared:

‘I must paint you! I simply must! … You are representative of an entire epoch!’

‘So, you want to paint my lack luster eyes, my ornate ears, my long nose, my thin lips; you want to paint my long hands, my short legs, my big feet—things which can only scare people off and delight no-one?’

‘You have brilliantly characterized yourself, and all that will lead to a portrait representative of an epoch concerned not with the outward beauty of a woman but rather with her psychological condition.

Do you believe Dix has accurately portrayed the new woman that was emerging in Germany? Did his involvement in the war play a role in his depiction?

formal analysis

Frank Stella’s Pequad Meets the Jeroboam: Her Story, Moby Dick Deckle Edges was created in 1993 as a lithograph, etching, aquaint, relief, and mezzotint. The work measures at 70 x 65 1/4”. It conveys an overall collage appearance with multiple colors, lines, and textures that overlap each other. Stella uses a dull color palette with mostly black, white and red, along with hints of blues, yellows, purples, and greens. Organic, curvilinear, overlapping shapes take up a majority of the work, with a few sharp geometric shapes scattered throughout. He incorporates line work into the piece that create grid-like areas and spiral areas. The texture created in the work as a whole appears thick and layered with cut paper materials. The light brown areas seem as though they would have a sand paper feeling to the touch. The large black areas create depth of space and portray black holes that the shapes over them are pouring into. The white areas have the opposite effect as they seem to come forward in the piece.

Museum Label

Chuck Close, Self-Portrait, 1991

Oil on Canvas, 8’ 4” x 7’ (2.5 x 2.1 m)

Chuck Close began his career meticulously painting photorealism portraits from 1970 – 1980. For Self-Portrait, Close experimented with a new technique that involved mapping a large Polaroid photograph onto a grid of squares. He chose a more muted palette of greys and browns and filled in his grid squares with layers of various colored, circular organic shapes. When the colored shapes are layered, they form a single hue that, when viewed from afar, transforms the grid into the likeness of his portrait. This allows the viewer to see both the cohesive whole of the image as well as the individual elements that make up the composition.

Chuck Close Self-Portrait, 1991 Oil on canvas 100 x 84″ (254 x 213.4 cm) The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Partial and promised gift of UBS © 2004 Chuck Close

Keaton Henson

(Contemporary artist that I like)

Keaton Henson, 1988, Plate for Throwing in Arguments, Fine Bone China

Keaton Henson is an illustrator, musician, and poet born in London on March 24th. His parents are actor Nicky Henson and ballerina Marguerite Porter. He began his career illustrating album covers such as Dananananaykroyd’s  “Hey Everyone” and Enter Shikari’s “Take to the Skies”. His art show “Hithermost” took place at the Pertwee, Anderson & Gold gallery in London in January 2013 and sold quickly. He has published books of art such as his graphic novel “Gloaming,” and continues to create artwork for his own albums and merchandise. “Plate for Throwing in Arguments” was originally created as an independent piece, but led to the creation of the chinaware collection “Crooked Darlings”.

Would you throw this plate?

 

Erin Koral

 

(Audrey Flack) Focus on Contemporary Artist

Audrey Flack, Wheel of Fortune, 1977-1978, oil and acrylic on canvas.

Audrey Flack, is known for painting the first photorealist picture and also for reviving themes such as emotional and psychological content which isn’t often associated with photorealism. Audrey Flack was a Abstract Expressionist artist in the beginning and switched over to illusionism and began creating her own contemporary versions of seventeenth-century vanitas. Because most historical vanitas were often associated with women’s preoccupation wit personal beauty and completely ignoring the world around them, this idea isn’t seen in Audrey Flack’s version of vanitas as she mixes both feminine items and memento mori symbols to remind people of their mortality and thus the futility of all greed and narcissism.

-Steph

Do you think Audrey Flack was able to change the way historical vanitas often conveyed women?

Fireflies In Water 6 word story

Fireflies in Water
Yayoi Kusama
Installation

From high above the dark sky

Light shining, reflecting through the ripples

Spreading wishes like stars at night

Like a dream never come true

 

-Amaia Garcia

What do you think you would feel being in this installation?

Richard Tuttle(1941-), Monkey’s Recovery for a Darkened Room (Bluebird), 1983

Vulnerability

Hides in the shadows
of circumstances and
springs upon
each of us as a
reaction to actions
misguided and seemingly
unkind.

We can not know
each others story
nor the lyrics
to all of our songs,
for each path is complex
and though they cross,
we can not rest, assured
that first impressions
will be lasting; that
perception will not
crumble in the toss
of words that come out wrong.

We can learn and embrace
forgiveness and lessons;
walk in the light of healing
or return to the shadows
of vulnerability

-Jim Boone

What other ideas do you get from looking at this piece and reading the poem?

-Marissa Giblin

Walter de Maria, Lightning Field, 1970-77

 

Process and Technique

Lightning Field is a work of Land Art situated in a remote area of the high desert of western New Mexico. It is comprised of 400 polished stainless steel poles installed in a grid array measuring one mile by one kilometer. The poles, two inches in diameter and averaging 20 feet and 7½ inches in height, are spaced 220 feet apart and have solid pointed tips that define a horizontal plane. A sculpture to be walked in as well as viewed, The Lightning Field is intended to be experienced over an extended period of time. A full experience of The Lightning Field does not depend upon the occurrence of lightning, and visitors are encouraged to spend as much time as possible in the field, especially during sunset and sunrise.