Developing Art

I've been finding myself creating more and more art based on personal experience. Much of my previous work as been of things of interest. It seems natural that I would do this, but that this is merely a way of distancing one's self from the art work. When the art becomes personal, the artist is laying all of their flaws and weakness out for people to see. This is probably why most create art of interest over personal art.

When I was in high school I was very interested in drawing anime and comic book art. I was very involved in drawing classes in high school, partly because it was an hour where I could draw and get credit for it and partly because I wanted to become a better artist. My teacher was constantly trying to push me away from comic art. I never drew much that I was interested in, but instead spent most of my time drawing still lifes. This was always a constant battle between my teacher and I.

It wasn't until later that I realized that it is impossible to grow as an artist creating the same type of work over and over. I have always loved comic art, but in order for me to grow as an artist, I needed to be able to draw from life as well. My teacher had my class create two self portraits, one at the beginning of class and one at the end. On the last day of class she showed us our original drawings and they were ridiculous. You never realize how much you grow unless you see it like that.

I think it can be the same with the type of art we make as well. If you get caught up in making art about one type of idea, technique or method, you limit yourself as an artist. Even if your good at what you do, the reason you do it over and over again because you feel comfortable doing it. By creating personal art, I find that the rest of my art develops as well. The art means something. The only problem is that it took eight years of art classes to figure this out.

Comics

I was recently at a very interesting talk at Oakland. The speaker was an English professor named Jeff Chapman and the talk was about graphic novels as art and literature. Graphic Novels are becoming much more accepted in the art and literary community. He argued that comics can be up there with other great works of literature and that comics are capable of many technical and narrative aspects that art and literature cannot do on their own.

He went on to explain some of these methods, showing some actual works as examples. One that had greatly influenced him from his childhood was a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles comic book. What was so interesting about it was the way it told the story. Every page separated the panels into two completely separate stories that were happening simultaneously. The book ended with the two stories unexpectedly coming together.

Something like this could never really be told to the same effect in a novel. It is the combination of graphics and literature that creates this effect. He showed many other interesting works that other comic artists are doing now. Something that I had never really seen before that was interesting was abstract comics. These contained little to no words and had no fluid narrative.

I have always been interested in graphic novels and have been reading them since I was a kid. It is probably because of this that I have no trouble in agreeing with him that graphic novels can become great works of art and literature. I think one of the biggest problems with people's acceptance is that they limit themselves to thinking of comics as a pop culture item for children. Perhaps if people simple read more more than they wouldn't be so quick to judge.

Illusions in Art

Probably the first artist that I became really interested in as a kid was M.C. Escher. His work was always extremely interesting. Even though his work was done mostly from wood blocks and lithographs, I felt that I could relate to his work because it looked like pencil, my tool of the trade at the time. He was the first artist that inspired me to try and make art with more meaning than just a doodle.

Optical illusions have always been interesting to me. I have been playing with them in my artwork for many years now. My most recent attempt at combining the two was a video performance that was inspired by an ambigram done by Scott Kim called "True/False." His work is almost entirely text based. He makes his living designing puzzles and illusions in everything from puzzles to computer games.

Another artist that uses illusions that has inspired me in my work is Rex Whistler. He creates pencil drawn inversions of faces that when looked at upside down create a new image. That faces are very bizarre and all share some similar qualities between them. I used this idea to create a series of full bodied creatures in a series on optical illusions. The drawings were all done on a single board that could be flipped either way.

Although the majority of these artist's work may not be considered high art, it is what has always appealed to me. This is probably because it is much easier to connect with illusions because the meaning of the work is clearer than most high art. People understand that the work is suppose to create an illusion making it easier to except the work. On the other hand, if the illusion is deeper than that, it is often overlooked and the art is misunderstood. It's an interesting paradox.

Future

In the 1960s there was an architectural group called Archigram. Ron Herron, a member of the group, did a project called A Walking City in 1964 where he created architectural designs of buildings after a nuclear war in the future. This series featured drawings on insect-like buildings that can actually walk to locations throughout the city. They were meant to be intelligent robots that formed self contained living pods that could walk through the city. The idea was that they could plug in to different locations throughout a city to exchange supplies and occupants.

I am particularly interested in the style in which the drawings were done. They have a very unique style to them. Although they are recognized as looking futuristic, they don't really look like anything that we would expect in today's future. Today's vision of the future looks like something out of an Apple store. Everything is minimalist and white.

Ideas of the future fit to change the current technology. Since Apple's technology is considered to be some of the most "hi-tech," our general vision of the future is one designed by Apple. Herron's designs of these robotic buildings has a very distinct 60s style to it. It looks like someone took apart an old TV and made these robots out of the pieces. The current vision of the future is not reflected on any new ideas for technology, but of simply advancements of current technology.

I would be interested to see a group try to do a similar project in today's society. I'm sure that they would retain the popular minimalist look that Apple has made so popular. When looking at the future, people forget the one thing that is even more difficult to predict than the advancements in technology. That's style and fashion.

Apocalyptic Art

I was recently working on a paper for an art history class. For the paper, I needed to look for artwork from the 1950s to 1960s that deal with the future. Surprisingly it was an extremely difficult task, but in looking I came across a genre of art that I suppose I never really thought of as a specific genre of art. Apocalyptic art.

I have always been interested in the apocalypse in art, having done works including the Four Horsemen and scenes of Death. Now I have been looking at works as a collection. I find them extremely interesting.

When researching, I found that much of the art began after the bombings on Nagasaki and Hiroshima. Much of the art is of ruined, post war cities, completely devastated. They are desolate, sad yet much of them very beautiful. Some are very vibrant and fiery. They are very interesting works.

I have become very interested in these works. I am planning on researching this type of art further. I am interested in a lot of the theory behind the art. I would like to eventually begin to try and experiment with these elements in my own work.

Essence

I'm really interested in the TV series Lost. The last season just premiered and I was looking at some images of the characters and they recently made a reenactment of DaVinci's painting The Last Supper. When looking at this I came across at least 10 different renditions of this painting on the first few pages alone. This got me to thinking about whether or not a piece like The Last Supper loses something because of how iconic it has become through popular culture.

I think that the majority of people would be able to immediately identify The Last Supper when they see it. It is a very iconic image. If people haven't seen the original they at least recognize a rendition when they see it. It's easy for anyone to sit a semi large group of people, sit them at a long table, with one figure emphasized in the middle, and it would become a substitute for the work.

My question is does this take away for the piece itself? Does the work of art lose some of its meaning? I think it does. The painting is no longer a symbol for Christ and communion. It becomes merely an iconic image, a symbol, for others to use.

This has happened with many other famous works of art. The Mona Lisa, The Scream, and American Gothic are a few of the most commonly used paintings. Have these paintings also lost some of there essence or aura because of popular culture? I believe they have. I think that every single time one of these paintings is reproduced in some way, shape, or form, a little bit of their essence is lost forever.

Kinetic Art

I was recently looking at some video art on YouTube, when I stubbled across this piece by Tim Fort.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LLRYo4V3HB8

Tim fort deals with kinetic art. His pieces are an giant elaboration on what we all used to do with dominoes as kids. The work is about cause and effect and are truly amazing. What I'm interested in is what part of this performance is the art.

Normally with art, the general consensus is that the finished process is the art. For artists like Jackson Pollock, it was the act of making it that was the art. But for kinetic artists like Tim Fort his work is destroyed when it's finished. The art exists only for its own destruction. Because of this, for kinetic art and other performance based works, it is not the finished product nor the act of creating it, but its own destruction that is the art.

Since this art only truly exists when it is being destroyed it can only be viewed as a performance. That means that this art can only reach larger audiences through video. Before video, if art like this was made it would exist only for the small group of people that saw it in action and then would be lost forever. It could be talked and written about, but it would never truly exist ever again.

Video has become a not only a method of creating art, but also immortalizing it. So many pieces of art have been lost forever because of an inability to record it. Through sites like YouTube we are able to spread art faster than ever before and also immortalize it further. People will copy that video from YouTube and duplicate it further than further. This ensures that the piece will never be lost, even if the creator destroys it.