Surrealism etc

29/3/2012

(week 7)

I chose to miss class toady (sorry Tess) but only because i needed to finalise things with regards to moving from where i was living to where i am now living - and i had to do it all myself.

Perhaps one of my classmates will fill me in on what went down :)

D.

Early 20th Century Art.

(22/3/2012)




I enjoyed this class today.


Well done to everyone for the final little presentations too, they were all brilliant. Well done my group and a special thanks to Eliza for such a stirring discussion/debate :)


Here are a few notes from today's class:


Revolution - A time of great change for the modern world happened at the start of the 20th century. The introduction of some impressive inventions that would revolutionise society and help shape the future to be what we know it as now.

• the automobile
• passenger air travel
• ocean liners (Titanic)
• world war 1

However, a number of tragic events also came as a result of all this new technology.




Art movements of this period ?


CUBISM
made famous by Braque and Picasso.


A style in which artists depicted distorted reality and made the view question what exactly it was they were looking at. Defracted and Refracted imagery and elements of composition like in a collage.


Colours were often muted so as to not add additional complexity to the painting's already radical depiction of the subject matter.


Some question Cubisms relationship with photography...


The word Cubism came from Braque's painting "House at Estaque in 1909. Braque was influenced by Cezanne (see previous post on blog) and when you study the two artists you can see this is quite apparent.


Other influences of this era came from literature, music and plays. The release of Simund Fraud's book "The Interpretation of Dreams" in 1900 caused an uprising in society, because it challenged what people already knew/believed and trusted.


Picasso - was the initiator of mixed media paintings. He added elements of real-world things like newspaper, wall paper, fabrics etc to boost his work to the viewer. This was known as Synthetic Cubism and with time became what we now know as collage.




FUTURISM
Started in Italy and rose in population around the cubists. But was a short-lived venture.


Filippo Tommaso Marinetti - was the founding-father of Futurism and it was the only movement introduced by a written manifesto. Marinetti (a classic Italian man) was a flamboyant and driven individual with great strong connections and wealth.


Marinetti was flaunting speed, technology, violence, politics and all things amazing. Very much an Avant-Garde expression. He wanted to bring an end to traditional art and ban previous styles, its subject matter and the artists way of thinking. No more reserved works - he encouraged radical, energetic, powerful and flamboyant art.


Futurism also incorporated the use of graphical elements such as type and lettering more than ever before and experimented with how it could be used and laid-out across the canvas to totally bend any traditional rules of reference etc.


Bragaglia - Introduced a change of perspective to photography as well as scientific photography. He and his work was constantly present during Futurism and basically created his own style know as Photo-Dinamism.


Fortunato Depero - Photographic performance started to happen to free-up the unengaging poses of days gone by. He encouraged the subject to move their body, show expression and joy to add real life to their photograph.


Vito Acconci - Experimanted with light and shadows.


Jules Marey - Was driven to capture the locomotion of movement.


Edward Muybridge - joined in on the act with everyone else and was a key influence in the birth of motion picture (film).


Of course NADAR was around in this era and did his best to add a touch of his own self to the mix, just because he could :)


Futurism expressed movement in ways that photography of the time was also able to record. So the two have strong/similar results when you study examples of this visual effect. It all fell apart soon after WW2 though.




PRESENTATION IS UP ON E-LEARN.












D.

Class outing #2

(15/03/2012)


We met again today at the National Gallery of Australia for what was another informative lesson in art history. Thanks again to Tess's involvement with the establishment, we were able to utilise the small theatre within the gallery for a powerpoint presentation and group discussion.


Notes from this lesson:


Modernism - rose to status around 1855 in Paris. A time of great industrial revolution in France. It was a period where artists began to be seen as something of a status symbol. They also began to step away from tradition in order to explore other ways of seeing the world in ways most people found hard to accept. It is believed to be the birth of the "ism" movements.


Bold artists started to bush the boundaries of realism and expressive ways by freeing up their technique. Imperfections were now encouraged in comparison to those who came before them.


With so much man-made change going on throughout this period, many artists depicted dream-like worlds/scenes as a way of escaping it all.


The rise of Photography also had an affect on artists. As if they would lock themselves away from the world in an attic, driven to paint absolute masterpieces in protest. They found it to be obtrusive and a threat to their income, for people were now turning to the amazement of this new technology. Yet at the same time, artists used this in a positive way to push themselves to create new work in order to retain their reputation.


Fauves - was a style of working in an un-realistic way, with radical shape and colour.


Post Modernism - changed the perspective of view to bring new interest to the viewer. Shifting away from the classic centre weighted view of the world as seen in previous movements.


1853 - opened up a new cultural revolution for artists around the world thanks to the asian countries allowing foreigners into their harbours and also their way of life. This was well received by westerners and certainly inspired them to explore the styles witnessed in countries like Japan.


The Japanese style was simple, but effective. It offered radical new perspective and cropping of the scene within the artist's frame. Rich new colours were present and the sense of a story being told for future generations.


When asked about Japanese culture and it's art, Claude Monet replied "There is nothing useless about it". Being fascinated by Japanese culture myself, i can only agree with his comment.


In conclusion, the link between Photography and Art has and always will remain strong throughout time. They also continue to challenge and inspire each other. 






D.






Paintings that took my interest were:


Cezanne:

Hiroshige:

Monet:

Matisse:

Utamaro:

Class outing #1

(week 4)

Computer-generated image of the National Gallery of Australia
Architect: Andrew Andersons, PTW Architects

Image by David Duloy, PTW Architects

Today all 1st year students took time to explore The National Gallery of Australia with Tess, who in addition to being our lecturer also works at the gallery. So given her extensive knowledge of the gallery and her years of artistic study, this was truly a privilege.

The purpose of today's visit was to help us all grasp a deeper understanding of how ART in all of its forms conveys a message or meaning to the viewer. Tess also tried to familiarise us with the various movements and genres of art and how moments in history, advancements in technology and even changes within society has helped create inspiration to evolved art as we know it throughout time.

I often visit galleries and exhibitions of all kinds for inspiration by myself, so i benefited from today. Being part of a group of creative minds was great because i was able to take in what people had to say based on their individual comprehension of what was in front of us - it certainly stirred up my own creative thoughts.

The group i was a part of involved Angus, Subas, Kiki, Kylie, and Genevieve and our painting was one of Claude Monet's series on Waterlillies. Between ourselves we shared some fantastic thoughts and all was given to our classmates verbally in our presentation to which we received a positive response. Well done team :)

Again, I took a lot away from today's class and compliment everyone for the deconstructive explanation of a chosen painting as part of their group assessment. If that just made any sense.

D.

Research Task

Visual Culture - Theory
(weeks 2 - 3)




Oh no! The art-theory class.. everyone's favourite right ;)


I have previous knowledge and experience with all this thanks to my artistic background throughout high school and during my tertiary studies, but welcome the thought of learning new things from a new set of lecturers and class mates - and so far i have.


Tess is quite a character and i think i will enjoy her classes.


It was nice listening to her story during last week's class introduction process and great to be a part of some stimulating class discussions. Let's hope this continues as i always enjoy taking in people's thoughts and feelings on things - especially the power of an image.

_

This week's class involved us visiting the CIT's on-campus library.


I found this beneficial as i never had time for libraries during my school years because i was never much of an academic student. However, now that i have grown up and have a thirst for knowledge i plan to embrace it as best as i can.


We were set a task to complete before the end of class and it involved splitting into small groups to select an artist and their work from last week's presentation and write a one-page report/review on it and present for feedback.


I paired off with Natasha, Taylor and Lisa - we chose Australian artist Frederick McCubbin's work The Pioneer.

Frederick McCubbin

The Pioneer (1904)

I enjoyed working with them for this task as they were all very proactive and delivered some great information with which we then all combined our own input to create the following.

D.