Wayne Thiebaud

Thiebaud's composition is pretty normal and typical, but i like the way he uses colour and shading. In his painting of the gum-ball machine for example, he uses clear lines to show different shades. Also, he makes the shadow in orange, which makes the piece different and interesting. He often uses light, soft colours, lighter than the colours most modern artists use. It makes his piece unique within the era. There's something about his pieces that I find cheerful and funny. It's mainly to do with his style, his images, and his choice of colours.

Rosenquist

I think what i like most about Rosenquist is the creativity of his composition. Sometimes it's not easy to figure out his paintings, just at first. They are mostly of just random things of our popular culture put together to create an image. I also love his way of shading and blending colors together to make the images so realistic. These are both elements that make the artist a useful reference. Rosenquist was a billboard painter which is interesting but not surprising at all. His style is very suited for advertisements i think. Through his painting, Rosenquist seems to discuss the theme of popular culture and is one of the leaders of the american pop art movement.

Edward Hopper

Edward hopper may be the best known American realist of the interwar period. However, he was not always popular through his life, and was only properly realized since his death. He explores themes such as solitude and introspection through his work. His paintings always seem to reflect loneliness and isolation. He often painted public places, but with very few people, if any, and there is never a crowd. Loneliness is evident in the characters in his pieces in every aspect such as face expression and body language. Also, there is hardly ever an interaction of any kind between the people in his paintings.

Hoppers style seems to consist of realism, and an anticipation of pop art. He draws things they way they are, exactly how they are seen. A lack of creation and imagination is evident. He uses dull and very mellow colours. All these elements make his paintings less interesting. However, they are all significant to his style as they contribute to his themes. His compositions are realist, but may be symbolic in some respect. His theme of loneliness interests me, as well as his view of such an empty isolated world.

Cindy Sherman says:

"When I'm making the work I'm never thinking of any of the things people find in it. Sometimes I wonder if it's all a lot of crap. Maybe the work doesn't mean anything. When they're writing about it they're just finding whatever to attach their theories to. I just happen to illustrate some theories."

I quoted Cindy Sherman because I think what she said in those few sentances is so significant to us as artists. When I read it i thought FINALLY! Finally an artists that straight-forwardly admits this. As an art student I always was made to believe that the more "meaning" there is to piece, the better it is. And sometimes I find myself struggling whether or not to add meaning and how would i go about doing so. And then here it is.. Cindy Sherman, who has been an influential part of modern art, tells us that actually, people are going to find meaning anyways. They might even make it up. Just like people do with everything really, desperately scrambling for meaning everywhere. You come across other successful artists as well, like Micheal Craig-Martin, who claims his pieces have no meaning. It makes me think, is it meaning that makes a piece of work successful? or could it be purely aesthetics? I guess we all settled with this a long time ago, art is whatever. anything everything. whatever. So.. is it settled? are you most likely going to be a successful artist.. by chance? Surely not.. right? Now Cindy Sherman's pieces have become really expensive. In 1999 the average selling price for one of her photographs was $20,000 to $50,000, then the same year one of the photographs from Film Stills sold for a reported $190,000. And The Museum of Modern art bought the complete set from Film Stills for one million dollars.

Cindy Sherman gave a rise in photography, proving that it is infact a form of art. In many of her works she mocks stereotypes of women in society. In some of her filmstills she captures very typical and cliche images of women. You can tell that she is portraying these negatively through the face expressions in the photographs. She mostly uses herself in her works as a model or actress.

Michael Craig-Martin

Michael Craig-Martin is a contemporary pop artist, mostly famous for his piece "Oak Tree". Many of his pieces consist of elements or objects of modern society. These are usually random objects put together. He also uses vibrant and bright colours to emphasize shapes and sizes. One aspect that is different about the artist is that his pieces claim to have no or little meaning. He simply draws objects relevant and essential in our everyday modern life. His techniques are a useful reference especially in terms of color and style, as they make his pieces eye-catching for the viewer.

I find that his composition is another element the differentiates him. He has an interesting approach into organizing his pieces and displaying the different objects. His works are very similar to each other, and if it wasn't for his interesting use of composition and colour they may become too repetitive and boring. Another thing i like about his work is his manipulation of size. Usually all the objects in a piece are almost the same size, so that for example a sharpener is the same size as a fire extinguisher. It's also interesting the way he flattens and simplifies objects, into their most basic forms.

http://www.michaelcraig-martin.com/

Jenny Saville

Jenny Saville is a British artist known for her paintings of naked obese women. She confronts and challenges notions of beauty and mocks the conventional stereotypes of how a woman is traditionally thought of (of course these are only some of her themes). She forces one to question the societal obsession with the idealized image of females, mainly that she must be slim and petite. I think at some point she also forces us to examine ourselves, our own views, and the society and culture we live in.

Saville is very courageous and direct in her work, and the fact that her paintings are usually at a very large scale emphasizes that. Her work is unconventional and controversial in some respect. However, she continues with her style as she displays an almost disgusting truth to the public.

The fascinating thing about Saville is that her work is somewhat out of place in a culture so obssesed with youth and beauty and thinness, and for this reason it stands out. Her work is unconventional as she does not veiw women as delicate beings, but as sufferers and possibaly survivors. She incorporates women's struggle with beauty through her work. Although the artist paints somewhat morbid images, I think her use of oil paints is actually very beautiful. Her paintings of the human body are extremely accurate from aspects such as the body's form and shape to its tone and colour. They give a highly sensual impression of the surface of the skin and the mass of the body. She uses colours such as whites and pinks as well as browns and reds to give a very physical and fleshy feeling. She draws attention to certain areas of the body with her use of streaks of bright colours. With this she shamelessly emphasizes on aspects of the female body.

Through her images and painting style she creates a complicated discomfort for the the viewers. I personally feel her works are those I don't want to look at but actually can't stop staring at (if you know what i mean). The details are somewhat disturbing, yet it is all you can look at.

I personally like her paintings more than her photographs, mainly because i love her style, especially her use of strong urgent brush strokes. Jenny Saville is a great refrence to those interesting in oil painting, the human body, and themes associated with the portrayal of women in society.

"American Quran" - Sandow Birk

For my final project, I was thinking along the lines of a contemporary take on islamic art and Quranic studies. Then recently I found this artist, Sandow Birk, who has been working on an "American Quran" for the past 5 years. Following the traditions of ancient Arabic and Islamic manuscripts, he's been hand writing the entire English-translated Quran following traditional guidelines like colors of inks, for example. He uses American style in his calligraphy, like from urban graffiti. Once each chapter is transcribed, he then illuminates the text and its message with scenes from contemporary American life. He investigates how the message relates to peoples lives in the United States today. He adapts techniques and styles of Arabic and Persian painting and albums.

His project could be seen as controversial. At a time when the United States is involved in two wars against Islamic nations, ironically Islam has become the fastest growing religeon in the country. So Sandow Birk explores the religion as it would mean to an individual American in the 21st Century, how it's messages relate to them in this life and time. I read in an article that the artist is worried that muslims would be offended, or misunderstand his intentions and take the project in the wrong way. He spoke to religious experts who said that might actually happen at a time like this.

I think I might have 2 opinions towards this project. As a muslim it's a little strange for me to see a project like this. It's weird to see such modern and western images as a background to scripts from the Quran. Also, traditionally figures of people of animals are not used Islam, so that part is strange to see too.
As an art/design student however, I found this project a very interesting take, given the political issues going on in this time. His portrayals are not negative, they are just relationships drawn between certain scripts of the Quran and an American's (or maybe any westerner's) daily modern life. Actually, if it is seen from this point of view, the message is a positive one; the portrayal of Islam by an American who has thoroughly studied the religion, to other Americans. It is always easier to understand something if it is explained to you in a style or manner or context that you can most relate to. This might actually help break the developing stereotype of the religion. His works cleverly blends the past with the present, and the East with the West, making the pieces unifying in a way. Also, a Muslim's life is very modernized now, and Muslims believe that their religion is timeless, that it can be applied in any time or place, so the project could also represent that.. All in all I can say that personally its hard not to be critical towards certain aspects of the project and the pieces, but generally i think Sandow Birk’s is only trying to consider the Quran as it was intended; a universal message to humankind.

Christoph Niemann

I've recently become a fan of Christoph Niemann, an illustrator, graphic designer, and author. His work appeared on the covers of The New Yorker, Atlantic Monthly, The New York Times Magazine and American Illustration. I love his style in illustration, bold and childish in a way, yet they represent serious issues with an almost humorous or ironic take. You can relate his style to pop art and comic art. Definitely an inspiration for my major project.
Check him out in these links:

http://christophniemann.com/man/bpages/gallery1.html

http://niemann.blogs.nytimes.com/?ref=design

The world's largest surrealist object

I can easily say that The Teatre-Museu Dali is one of the most interesting and inspiring museums I have ever been to. It is located in Dali's hometown Figures and contains the broadest range of works spanning his artistic career, from his earliest artistic experiences and his surrealist creations down to the works of the last years of his life. The Museum itself could be seen as a great work of Dali, everything in it was conceived and designed by the artist himself in order to offer visitors a real experience of getting inside his unique world. When entering the museum there are so many weird things about it, and nothing makes sense. You'd still appreciate the beauty of it all, but it just seems so bizarre. Later on you'd find out everything in the place is significant, and it all makes perfect sense. I was moving from one room to another being more and more convinced of how much of a genius Dali is.
After visiting his museum, I am now completely amazed by Salvador Dali. His works of art reflect an enormous diversity of techniques, materials and media: paintings, drawings, sculptures, engravings, installations, jewellery, holograms, photography and more. He has explored so many artistic styles at his time, from cubism, to renaissance and religious paintings. And finally has his own bizarre style that is so distinctive that I don't think there can be anything like it.


This is just one of the works in the museum. The story behind it is that Dali wanted to prove in front of an audience what a genius he is, and that he painted spontaneously and from insight (talk about modesty). What he did was he placed a live squid on canvas flat down on the ground. As the squid spilled its ink on the canvas, Dali moved it around with his feet and produced a painting of Beethoven.


This was the ceiling painted by Dali in one of the rooms in the museum. The main part of it is supposed to be his wife Gala and himself going up to heaven, representing that both of them will remain immortal through his paintings and works of art.

The Hundertwasser-krawina house

Hundertwasser was an Austrian painter and architect. He became one of the most popular contemporary Austrian artists by the end of the 20th century. He had and original artistic vision which occured in pictorial art, environmentalism, philosophy, and design of facades, postage stamps, flags, and clothing. Some of the common themes of his work were colours, humans and nature, and organic forms.

The Hundertwasser-krawina house is an apartment house in Vienna designed by Hundertwasser. It was his first architectural project and probably the most famous and successful. Altogether he made 50 designs for shaping and remodeling buildings. Each apartment is a different colour as seen from the outside. Vegetation covered the roofs and terraces, and trees would grow from inside the building out the window. They would clean the air, soften the noise, and give shade. Some terraces were inaccessible, where nature may run its own undisturbed course. The columns in the building were very playful and colourful.
One of the most interesting things I found about Hundertwasser’s work was his rejection of straight lines. There were almost no straight lines in his work. He believed that they are uncreative and unnatural, as they don’t occur in nature. For this reason the floors in the apartment house were uneven and the walls were painted in a wave-like direction. I love the way he incorporates nature into his work in such a contemporary and modern way.
My favorite part of the apartment house was the children’s playing room. In the middle of the building was a big arch connecting the two main parts of the building. This was utilized on the inside. It was used as the children’s playing room, and they used it as a slide.
Another cool thing about the place is that people who lived in the building were welcome to scribble on the walls. The artist thought it was necessary for them to add their personal touch to the place.