Materials and Process Visual Essay
Aluminum is the most abundant and commonly used metal on earth with the second highest global production. This lustrous malleable silver metal is used in both art and design for its beauty and functionality. The lightweight and anti-corrosive qualities make it an ideal material whether one is creating sculptures or airplanes. Aluminum’s affordability and availably allow both designers and artists, regardless of social standing, to access this material with ease and transform its mundanity into something truly remarkable.
1) Number 1 (Lavender Mist) - Jackson Pollock Jackson Pollock is a man known for his drip paintings that became iconic in the abstract expressionist movement due to his chaotic technic.
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He summarizes his practice as a “reliance on mediums close at hand, portability and abstraction” to which there is no better material than aluminum. Anatsui recycles the tops of liquor bottles and through a process of flatting, cutting, and twisting he connects sheets of colored metal to form massive works of art. The pieces are installed differently every time in the way that they hang, fold, and catch light. The recycled aluminum causes him to make ecological statements through his pieces. He transforms some of the abundance of trash in Africa into pieces with incredible value. When viewers experience Anatsui’s pieces there is a thought process develops from overwhelming beauty to realizing the background and material of the pieces, changing their perceptions in the …show more content…
aluminum tubing, Maya Lin outlines a 3-D landscape of the submerged Mid Atlantic Ridge. By grounding viewers in a gallery, she is able to recreate massive parts of our earth on an architectural scale. Viewers can connect with the piece by moving through and under the work and its rolling horizon. Using topography, oceanography, and her study of landscapes as a foundation for her practice she brings to life what would otherwise go unseen. Her process includes making models, digital drawings, and eventually installing her work. Aluminum tubing lends itself well to her projects due to its malleable properties, natural material and simplicity that is reminiscent of a
Vincent Van Gogh is one of the world’s greatest and most well-known artists, but when he was alive he considered himself to be a complete failure. It was not until after he died that Van Gogh’s paintings received the recognition they deserved. Today he is thought to be the second best Dutch artist, after Rembrandt. Born in 1853, he was one of the biggest artistic influences of the 19th century. Vincent Van Gogh created a new era of art, he learned to use art to escape his mental illness, and he still continues to inspire artists over 100 years later.
The exhibition of recent stoneware vessels by Peter Voulkos at Frank Lloyd Gallery featured the sort of work on which the artist established reputation in the 1950s. The work was greeted with stunned amazement. However now it is too, but it's amazement of a different order -- the kind that comes from being in the presence of effortless artistic mastery. These astonishing vessels are truly amaising. Every ceramic artist knows that what goes into a kiln looks very different from what comes out, and although what comes out can be controlled to varying degrees, it's never certain. Uncertainty feels actively courted in Voulkos' vessels, and this embrace of chance gives them a surprisingly contradictory sense of ease. Critical to the emergence of a significant art scene in Los Angeles in the second half of the 1950s, the 75-year-old artist has lived in Northern California since 1959 and this was his only second solo show in an L.A gallery in 30 years.”These days, L.A. is recognized as a center for the production of contemporary art. But in the 1950s, the scene was slim -- few galleries and fewer museums. Despite the obscurity, a handful of solitary and determined artists broke ground here, stretching the inflexible definitions of what constitutes painting, sculpture and other media. Among these avant-gardists was Peter Voulkos.” In 1954, Voulkos was hired as chairman of the fledgling ceramics department at the L.A. County Art Institute, now Otis College of Art and Design, and during the five years that followed, he led what came to be known as the "Clay Revolution." Students like John Mason, Paul Soldner, Ken Price and Billy Al Bengston, all of whom went on to become respected artists, were among his foot soldiers in the battle to free clay from its handicraft associations.
Jackson Pollock." Encyclopedia of World Biography. 2nd ed. Vol. 12. Detroit: Gale, 2004. 379-380. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 2 Apr. 2014.
(MOCAD) like industrial design, expressionism and art that has repetition. In the Design 99 Too Much of a Good Thing exhibit was not traditional art but found objects that were then change or to make something new out of different items. In this exhibit there are some pieces of art was walk-trough art. The artists idea was to take found materials and
Jackson Pollock was an American abstract artist born in Cody, Wyoming in 1912. He was the youngest of his five brothers. Even though he was born on a farm, he never milked a cow and he was terrified of horses because he grew up in California. He dropped out of high school at the age of seventeen and proceeded to move to New York City with his older brother, Charles, and studied with Thomas Hart Benton at the Art Students League. Thomas Benton was already a great artist at the time in which Pollock studied with him. Benton acted like the father figure in Pollock’s life to replace the original that wasn’t there. Benton was known for his large murals that appear on ceilings or walls. “Jack was a rebellious sort at all times,” recalls his classmate and friend, artist Harold Lehman. He grew his hair long and helped pen a manifesto denouncing athletics, even though “he had a muscular build and the school wanted to put him on the football team,” says former teacher Doug Lemon. Pollock always was upset with himself in his studies because he had troubles drawing things like they were supposed to look. From 1938 to 1942, Jackson joined a Mexican workshop of people with a painter named David Siqueiros. This workshop painted the murals for the WPA Federal Art Projects. This new group of people started experimenting with new types of paint and new ways of applying it to large canvas. People say that this time period was when Jackson was stimulated with ideas from looking at the Mexican or WPA murals. Looking at paintings from Picasso and the surrealists also inspired Jackson at this time. The type of paint they used was mixing oil colors with paint used for painting cars. Jackson noticed that the shapes and colors they created were just as beautiful as anything else was. Jackson realized that you didn’t have to be able to draw perfect to make beautiful paintings. Jackson started developing a whole new way of painting that he had never tried before and his paintings were starting to look totally different from before.
In present time, Vincent van Gogh is probably the most widely known and highly appreciated person of postimpressionism. During his brief lifetime, Vincent’s work went almost unknown to this world. His work now hangs in countless museums throughout the world and is considered priceless. His work became an important bridge between the 19th and 20th centuries.
The article Artists Mythologies and Media Genius, Madness and Art History (1980) by Griselda Pollock is a forty page essay where Pollock (1980), argues and explains her views on the crucial question, "how art history works" (Pollock, 1980, p.57). She emphasizes that there should be changes to the practice of art history and uses Van Gogh as a major example in her study. Her thesis is to prove that the meaning behind artworks should not be restricted only to the artist who creates it, but also to realize what kind of economical, financial, social situation the artist may have been in to influence the subject that is used. (Pollock, 1980, pg. 57) She explains her views through this thesis and further develops this idea by engaging in scholarly
Mark Rothko, born as Marcus Rothkowitz, was born September 25, 1903 in Gvinsk, Russia and by the age of ten had emigrated to the United States with his parents. He attended Yale University in the early 1920's, but never completed his formal education there. In 1925 he entered studies at the Art Students League in New York City where he started painting under the instruction of Max Weber. Although he studied under Max Weber he still considered himself as basically a self-taught painter. In the 1930's and 1940's he went through phases influenced by Expressionism and Surrealism, but from about 1947 he began to develop his own distinctive style for which he is known for today. Critics labeled Mark Rothko as an Abstract Expressionist, but defiantly he argued this association by his peers, because he did not want to be known for a certain style. When Rothko started painting, his work was more symbolic than...
Art is defined as the expression or application of human creative skill and imagination, typically in a visual form such as painting or sculpture, producing works to be appreciated primarily for their beauty or emotional power. Jackson Pollock does an amazing job creating art. Pollock’s works are not as big as some of the other artists like Monet’s paintings but his works are still large enough to engulf the viewer.
This notion of Abstract Expressionism has become an interesting factor between the Contemporary arts making of Abstract arts, specifically paintings. When approaching Artworks from Contemporary Abstract painters, the subject matter dives deeper in meaning than the actual artwork before the viewer. From an outward appearance, some paintings from artist, such as, James Little, juxtaposed to works by Odili Donald Odita, have a lot of formal similarities within the uses of geometrical shapes and balancing colors. However, understanding the means to why each artist paints the way they do, will actually become rather different from first approaching and accessing the paintings.
Abstract art in comparison to realism, can be described as two art forms on opposite ends of the art style spectrum. Picasso and Pollock both had a massive impact on the outcome of modern art through their ability to challenge viewers as they interpret art, not for what the painting shows, but instead what the idea of it came from. Picasso’s painting is now an iconic symbol for an anti-war message, and Pollock’s painting now represent a form of freedom of speech and expression throughout America. Ultimately the reason artists moved from realism to abstract came from the invention of the camera, giving artist a reason to branch to new and edgy art forms, which will later create the modern art
Jackson Pollack and Vincent van Gogh are some of most famous artist before and after their time. Each artist has a similar and different painting methods that they use when painting pictures. There most well-known paintings are called “Number 1” and “The Starry Night”. The paintings give off emotion by how they look, but each one is painted in different ways. The public did not find their paintings wanting when they were made. The difference was how long it took for them to get recognized for their work. Lastly, the paintings gave different and similar reactions to people that have changed over the years of their existence.
The use of materials to complement a design’s emotional reaction has stuck with the modernist movement. His implementation of these materials created a language that spoke poetically as you move through the structure. “Mies van der Rohe’s originality in the use of materials lay not so much in novelty as in the ideal of modernity they expressed through the rigour of their geometry, the precision of the pieces and the clarity of their assembly” (Lomholt). But one material has been one of the most important and most difficult to master: light. Mies was able to sculpt light and use it to his advantage.
My understanding of action painting coming into this class was nonexistent. I had heard the name Jackson Pollock before and had seen some of his different paintings, but I hadn’t heard the term ‘action painting’ before. It wasn’t until this last week that we reached the portion in the book that even mentions Jackson Pollock or action painting. Despite how new the term is to me, and how little I had really looked at any of Pollock’s work, it’s honestly a fascinating style of art.
It is difficult to define or explain the artistic impulse, even today, and it is even more difficult to pinpoint the one point in history when human beings developed a desire for aesthetically pleasing objects. However, several trends that have endured for thousands of years, particularly the decoration of vessels, textiles, and jewelry, and the creation of drawings and sculpture even today when they are no longer the easiest way to tell a story, leads me to believe that there is something in the human spirit that has always sought out the beautiful, whether in concord or conflict with the practical. And although the role of art and artists has changed drastically in the past and will likely continue to do so in the future, there will always be an impulse, whether admired and supported or looked down upon by society, to make life just a little bit brighter.