Utopian & Dystopian Vision

Artists dissatisfied with the injustices around them often express their desire for change by representing their ideals through the worlds they create. Consider two (2) of the following works in light of the cultural milieu in which they were created. Ground your response with details about the individual artists that you have learned from the reading, and be specific in your description of the works’ shared formal qualities and/or construction by using some of the following terms in your post: cubist, fauvist, primitive, contour, planar, and cropping. The works are: Samurai Leaving Home on Spring Day, Japanese woodblock print by Toyokuni III, 1852; Wooden Ceremonial Fang Mask, Gabon Africa, 19th century; The Dessert (Harmony in Red) by Henri Matisse, 1908; Guitar, cardboard construction by Pablo Picasso; The Yellow Christ, by Paul Gauguin, 1889; and Blue Nude, cut paper collage by Henri Matisse, 1952. As usual, click on the images to see them large.

Final Paper

Field Trip to the Art Institute: I will be going to the Art Institute on October 5th, and you are welcome to go along. We’ll meet at the circle at 9:30am and then walk over together to the College Ave station (or you can meet us there) to catch the 9:57 train. We’ll return on the 2:40pm train which will get back to Wheaton at 3:30. Tickets are $4.50 each way, and the Institute’s entrance fee has unfortunately gone up to $12. If this time doesn’t suit, you might choose to go on a Thursday evening as there is free admission between 5-8pm. From the Chicago station, we’ll travel east on Madison for about ten blocks until you hit Millennium Park. The Institute is just south.

Paper Instructions: Your task for the final paper is to spend significant time in person with a single work of art. By significant I mean around thirty (30) minutes. It may seem very difficult at first, but I encourage you to slow down your pace, and look deeply and intently at the piece.

Take notes. Make sketches. Be as specific and descriptive as possible of what you see. Use plentiful adjectives and active verbs to enrich your writing. Consider the formal elements and principles of design. Is theline quality sinuous and delicate or rough, jagged? Is form created through the depiction of shapes and planes or by build up of texture and mass? Are brushstrokes or the bites of a chisel evident, or have surfaces been smoothed out or “licked”? Does negative space flow in and around the volumes, or is it trapped, dense and solid? What hueshave been chosen, and what is their specific quality (value, intensity, or saturation)? How have the elements been composed or arranged in relation to one another and the audience, and in what manner or style has the subject been visually executed? How does this contribute to the feel or possible meaning(s) of the work?

When you think you have seen everything there is to see, put your pencil down and close your eyes. When you open them, look at the piece again. Look at the title if you haven’t already, and any additional information which might help to give some further context for the piece.

Next, interpret the work in light of at least one of the major themes we have been studying in our text: the Earth as Art, Representations of the Divine, Pilgrimage, the shifting role of the artist in relation to her patrons, the idea of Utopia and Dystopia, and the Spirit World and the Inner Mind. Refer back to a specific work we looked at either in the text, or online in the blog.

And finally, end with some concluding thoughts. The entire paper should be between 500-750 words and fit on a single page. It is better to be short and interesting than rambling and incoherent. On a cover page, include a color image of the work and your name. Due in my box (2nd floor of Adams) by 4:30pm on Tuesday, 12 October.

Click here for a printable pdf of these instructions.

* For those of you who are unable to make it to the field trip or to the Institute on your own, you may choose a work that is here on campus (quite a number are here in the halls of Adams), or at another local college gallery or museum. You might also consider an outdoor piece of sculpture and its context. Benedictine University in Lisle has a wonderful collection of contemporary religious works throughout its campus, and in the architecturally significant abbey: St Procopius.

ART:21

Since our session was unfortunately cut short by the power outages, I’m giving you the following links to peruse at your leisure over the weekend. First, here is a short video about the contemporary German artist-photographer Florian Maier-Aichen and Cao Fei, a young Chinese artist who works in online environments. The link will begin playing the entire “Fantasy” program. You can watch the entire thing if you want, but I’d like you to look specifically at chapters 8-13 (if you hover over the video, images will pop up to show the beginnings of chapters). Their work engages new ways of representing the movement through space (mapmaking and contemporary ways of representation, which might inspire you as you consider your own manuscript page.

And here are the images from the second half of class again, larger, here is a pdf.

The Commissioned Manuscript Page

Here are some more detailed instructions for the collaborative manuscript project that we are beginning to undertake. More to come as we progress: 1) Think of some significant moments in your personal or family history. Choose one that has a particular and memorable location. In 25-100 words write this story. The more poetic and succinct the better. Separate one short line from the whole. This might be a quote, or climax, or denouement… something that sums up the memory or perhaps expands it to your present context, etc…. Please add your story as a comment to this post.

2) Next, think of a path you have memorized having traveled it repeatedly. It should be a route that is not simply a straight line, and that returns to its starting point (to make a loop). Make a drawing of this path from memory as a map, as accurately as possible. Then print off a satellite or internet map source of this same path, carefully highlighting or tracing it in some way to make it prominent. 3) Gather visual references (or create your own!) that connect with your narrative. Organize these elements into a compositional structure that flows naturally from the story.

Incorporate several visual ways of bringing order and richness to your piece: line, rhythm, balance, scale, texture, value, color (ie. limited palette), pattern, framing, layers, transparency, grid, diagram, contrast, emphasis…. For inspiration from those who have gone before, click here. Final size of the page should be 8×10 inches and vertical. Convince me/us that you have considered every square inch of the composition. This does not necessarily mean you have to “fill” all the space, but that you have thought about and taken care with the whole. Enjoy yourself in the making!

Representations of the Gods

Compare and contrast any two of the six representations of gods/rulers in this post (bas relief of Assyrian King Sargon II, Venus of Willendorf, The Good Shepherd from San Callisto Catacombs 2nd century AD, bronze statue of Discobolus 2nd century AD Roman copy of Greek original, mosaic of the Good Shepherd from Ravenna ca 430AD, and Claus Sluter’s Head of Christ ca 1400AD). Be specific, descriptive and poetic as you consider the formal qualities and media of the works in relation to the culture and religion in which they were produced (ie. the texture of Venus’ hair has been likened to cornrows and could perhaps be a reference to the harvest). Use some of these terms in your response: free-standing, relief, additive, subtractive, abstract, and naturalistic. Click on the images to view them in greater detail.

The Earth as Art

Choose two of the four works in this post to compare and contrast (ancient Nazca Line Monkey in Peru, Stonehenge, Andy Goldsworthy’s Fused Icicles click here for a good video clip, and a work from Ana Mendieta’s Silueta series 1973-78). Think about the process used to create them (number of people required, time and energy taken, location, materials, etc…) and how it relates to your understanding and interpretation of the works’ meaning(s). Consider at least two of the following concepts in your response: figure and ground, orientation, structure, sublime and spiritual, minimalism, temporal vs permanent and collaboration. Click on the images to view them in greater detail. For a pdf of the images we looked at in class, click here.

Formal Elements of Art

Compare and contrast the formal qualities of two of the six artworks in this post: Harrison Xinshi Tu’s calligraphic painting Asking the Heaven, Tim Hawkinson’s fingernail bird skeleton (the same artist who created the überorgan and more!), Richard Serra’s torqued steel Sequence (click here for a good video about Serra); Käthe Kollwitz’s woodcut Death of a Child 1925, Lucien Freud’s self portrait in oil, and Alexander Calder playing with one of his mobiles, without making value judgments about their content or subject matter. Consider the medium utilized and include references to at least three of the following: line quality, shape, mass/volume, space, texture and color. You might also consider that you’re looking at photographs of the original artworks online, and experience of the work in real, physical space could be a vastly different experience (ie. seeing the impression of the wood block on the paper or walking through Serra’s torqued spaces). Click on the images for larger versions.

Welcome to Art Survey

Greetings. This is the blog to accompany our Art Survey course, where you will be required to post a weekly response to the assigned reading or questions I specifically pose here. As a test, please leave a 3-5 sentence comment answering the following question: Which of the portraits of Christ in this post do you most identify with and why? Try to be descriptive of what you see (ie. what is the pose like? the gaze of the eyes? the technique or media?). You can click on the images to see them larger.

OR

Craft a short response to a striking visual element in the film The Secret of Kells, and how it colored your appreciation of ideas presented in the narrative. For example, the Abbot’s architectural plan of the abbey is used as a device to show the passage of time as he gets continually closer to “midnight”. Poets might be interested to know that the cat, Pangur Ban, is named for a poem written by an 8th century monk.

Click here to download the course syllabus and calendar.