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THIS PADLET STARTS WITH SECONDARY RESEARCH AND THE LINKS TO THE PRIMARY RESEARCH AND FINAL BRIEFS PADLETS ARE AT THE BOTTOM OF THIS PAGE

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THIS PADLET STARTS WITH SECONDARY RESEARCH AND THE LINKS TO THE PRIMARY RESEARCH AND FINAL BRIEFS PADLETS ARE AT THE BOTTOM OF THIS PAGE

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The pestle and mortar represents the first tools man used for grinding pigments for painting and mark making, as used by the Great Masters.

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WEEKEND 4 SEMESTER 2 BRANCUSI KING OF KINGS

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WEEKEND 4 SEMESTER 2 BRANCUSI KING OF KINGS

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Brancusi's totem like sculpture was I thought very similar to the abstract sculptures of Hepworth, above. then I learned that she was heavily influenced by Brancusi, as was Louise Bourgois.

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The monumental oak King of Kings (Le roi des rois, 1938) was originally intended to stand in Brancusi's Temple of Meditation, a private sanctuary commissioned in 1933 by the Maharaja Yeshwant Rao Holkar of Indore. Although never realized, the temple-conceived as a windowless chamber (save for a ceiling aperture) with interior reflecting pool, frescoes of...

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Some amazing images here

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A recurring theme within contemporary art photography has been the imperative to address the biased or unavailable historical representation of the Black, female body. Since the 1990s' artists like Carrie Mae Weems, Renee Cox, Xaviera Simmons and now Nona Faustine, have used photography to recognize Black womanhood in all its unattested complexities. In the photographs shown below, each artist has settled their melanated bodies within their landscape of choice - sites that have witnessed unspeakable violence, marooned existences and/or enlightened encounters.

Arguably the most prolific in her use of self-portraits within landscape, Carrie Mae Weems' elegant figure has crossed the lens of several different bodies of work starting with her 2001 Dreaming in Cuba series. Unlike the other artists discussed, Weems more often than not stands in opposition to the lens, as if leading a group behind her. Exaggerated by robes or gowns, Weems' figure floats into the frame, inserting the Black, female body into spaces from which its presence was forgotten or previously denied entry.

Launching her art career after a two-year pilgrimage retracing the TransAtlantic slave trade with Buddhist monks, Xaviera Simmons's concern with wilderness explores spirituality in art. In previous works, Xaviera has used photography to create (self) portraits in both constructed and natural environments that question African-American identities and their relationships to those settings.

Although all of these artist perform for the camera, Renee Cox's work is most dramatic in its telling of the stories of Black female figures like Queen Nanny, the only female national hero of Jamaica. Taking advantage of the physical strength expressed by her own, muscular body, Cox is concerned with self liberation and challenging the predetermined roles imposed on Black women.

Continuing this photographic tradition, Faustine's work brilliantly hits at the intersection of two major socio-political conversations of the 21st century: the #BlackLivesMatter and body size acceptance movements. Standing on sacred, scarred or political North American spaces, Faustine's self-portraits ultimately function as archaeological documentation. In its robust form and stoic posture, her body is a blatant reminder of chattel slavery yet also channels (art) historical representations of the feminine - from fertility goddesses/Venus figures to ancient Egyptian statuettes.

Faustine's use of poetic captions with each photograph is particularly unique as she educates the viewer of what lies beneath these commonplace landmarks and tourist attractions. As commentary on issues that haunt our past and present realities, the images in White Shoes and in Faustine's follow up exhibition at Baxter St are timeless, visualizing the cycle of (our country's) birth, (economic) growth, death and rebirth.
Nona Faustine's solo exhibition, My Country, closes this week at Baxter St. You can also see her talk at the Brooklyn Museum this Saturday, January 14th. Qiana Mestrich is a photographer, writer, digital marketer and mother from Brooklyn, NY. She is the founder of Dodge & Burn: Decolonizing Photography History, a blog that seeks to establish a more inclusive history of photography, highlighting contributions to the medium by and about people of underrepresented cultures. Read her other guest posts on the Baxter St blog: Photography and the Black Panther Party, The Black Female Self in Landscape and In Memoriam: John Berger and Uses of Photography Quotes.

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A recurring theme within contemporary art photography has been the imperative to address the biased or unavailable historical representation of the Black, female body. Since the 1990s' artists like Carrie Mae Weems, Renee Cox, Xaviera Simmons and now Nona Faustine, have used photography to recognize Black womanhood in all its unattested complexities.

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WEEKEND 2 SEMESTER 2 VIDEO ESSAY 'WHAT IS A BODY?'

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WEEKEND 2 SEMESTER 2 VIDEO ESSAY 'WHAT IS A BODY?'

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The human body is central to how we understand facets of identity such as gender, sexuality, race, and ethnicity. People alter their bodies, hair, and clothing to align with or rebel against social conventions and to express messages to others around them. Many artists explore gender through representations of the body and by using their own bodies in their creative process.

The 1960s and 1970s were a time of social upheavals in the United States and Europe, significant among them the fight for equality for women with regards to sexuality, reproductive rights, the family, and the workplace. Artists and art historians began to investigate how images in Western art and the media-more often than not produced by men-perpetuated idealizations of the female form. Feminist artists reclaimed the female body and depicted it through a variety of lenses.

Around this time, the body took on another important role as a medium with which artists created their work. In performance art, a term coined in the early 1960s as the genre was starting to take hold, the actions an artist performs are central to the work of art. For many artists, using their bodies in performances became a way to both claim control over their own bodies and to question issues of gender.

To explore more, click on each artwork thumbnail, then click again on the larger image that appears in the box above.

A term that emerged in the 1960s to describe a diverse range of live presentations by artists, including actions, movements, gestures, and choreography. Performance art is often preceded by, includes, or is later represented through various forms of video, photography, objects, written documentation, or oral and physical transmission.

A category of artistic practice having a particular form, content, or technique.

1. Comparing Notes
Ana Mendieta and John Coplans both use their own bodies to create their works.

Compare and contrast Mendieta's Nile Born and Coplans's Self Portrait. Consider the following questions: How are their bodies represented in the final art works? How do the artists represent the female and male body? How do they create universal images of the body, and how do they create personal images of themselves?

Reflect. Choose a few of the above questions to respond to, or create your own. Write a response in a one- or two-paragraph essay.

2. Beauty Is Skin Deep
Lorna Simpson, Senga Nengudi, and John Coplans's works challenge the traditional conventions of beauty.

Consider. What qualities does contemporary society consider beautiful today? How are the standards of beauty different for men and for women? What do you and your peers do to conform with or rebel against these standards? How do you receive messages about what is considered beautiful?

Create. Often the media influences our standards of beauty and fashion. Collect images of beauty in magazines, advertisements, newspapers, and on the web. On a large sheet of paper, draw a line down the middle. On the left side, paste images that conform to typical standards of beauty. On the right side, paste images that defy these standards. How many images did you find for the left side? How many did you find for the right side?

3. The Body as a Paintbrush
Carolee Schneemann and Yves Klein both used the human body to paint on a canvas.

Consider Schneemann's Up to and Including Her Limits and Yves Klein's Anthropometry. Watcha video of Klein's process.

In Up to and Including Her Limits, Schneemann used her body to paint on a canvas. To make Anthropometry, Klein, a male artist, would direct female models covered in paint.

Compare and contrast. How are Schneemann's and Klein's processes similar? How are they different? Does the fact that Schneemann used her own body and Klein used the bodies of women change how you view their works?

4. Hair and Identity
Hair is an important part of a person's identity. People often style their hair to align themselves with certain trends, social groups, or political statements.

Research. Pick a work of art that depicts people.Start by visiting the website for Hair: Untangling the Roots of Identity, an exhibition at Cornell University's Johnson Museum of Art. You can also search in MoMA's collection. Looking at the subject(s) in the work of art, think about what their hairstyles might reveal about their identity.

Consider and create. What does your hairstyle say about you? Take a photo of your haircut-it can be from the back of your head, if you prefer-and share it on Flickr by tagging it "MoMA Learning Hairstyle." Check out this page or the Flickr photo set to see other examples!

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The human body is central to how we understand facets of identity such as gender, sexuality, race, and ethnicity. People alter their bodies, hair, and clothing to align with or rebel against social conventions and to express messages to others around them.

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Glenn gave us a brief to make a 5 minute video essay responding to the question 'What is a body?' My research was based around exploring different types of video essay.

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WEEKEND 6 SEMESTER 2  MAY DAY PADLET RESEARCH The Atlanteans film Bob Quinn

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WEEKEND 6 SEMESTER 2  MAY DAY PADLET RESEARCH The Atlanteans film Bob Quinn

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I've picked this as my fourth piece of research froM the May Day padlet. I've not watched it yet but am looking forward to having the time to watch the episodes during the summer!

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If you are interested in the deeper layers of Irish culture and historical influences then this is possibly the most important documentary ever made on the subject. The awarding winning series "Atlantean" began filming in 1981. This is episode one of the quartet by Bob Quinn.

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If you are interested in the deeper layers of Irish culture and historical influences then this is possibly the most important documentary ever made on the subject. The awarding winning series "Atlantean" began filming in 1981. This is episode one of the quartet by Bob Quinn.

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WEEKEND 6 SEMESTER 2 MAY DAY PADLET RESEARCH

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WEEKEND 6 SEMESTER 2 MAY DAY PADLET RESEARCH

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I love the writing of Arundhati Roy , her book the God of Small Things is one I could read over and over again. This piece is fascinating.

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Arundhati Roy: ‘The pandemic is a portal’ | Free to read

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The novelist on how coronavirus threatens India — and what the country, and the world, should do next

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Weekend 6 SEMESTER 2 MAY DAY PADLET RESEARCH

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Weekend 6 SEMESTER 2 MAY DAY PADLET RESEARCH

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My second piece of research  is this link for Chantal  Ackerman's movie , from the presentation of Radical Domestic on Jesse's May Day padlet. I'm interested in this subject matter as artistic enquiry, sparked by the fact  my daughter has just written a final year  thesis on  trafficking into prostitution in the Netherlands. Statistics don't account for the 'invisible' sex workers like the woman in this film who is selling sex at home as a way to make income to look after her son.

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Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975) Multi Subs Film complet Chantal Akerman

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WEEKEND 6 SEMESTER 2 MAY DAY PADLET RESEARCH

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WEEKEND 6 SEMESTER 2 MAY DAY PADLET RESEARCH

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I chose Semiotics of the Kitchen as one of my four pieces of secondary research from Jesse's padlet made over the May Day weekend. I fell in love with Martha Rosler's work last year and no matter how many times I watch this,  I always find something new to appreciate. The fact that she has reinvented this work in more recent years is testament to its original appeal,.

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Martha Rosler - Semiotics of the Kitchen  1975

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WEEKEND 5 SEMESTER 2 PHOTOGRAPHY WORKSHOP 

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WEEKEND 5 SEMESTER 2 PHOTOGRAPHY WORKSHOP 

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Another striking image from Abelardo Morell. I really loved the camera obscura excercise that we got for the exit brief!

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WEEKEND 5 SEMESTER 2 PHOTOGRAPHY WORKSHOP ABELARDO MORELL

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WEEKEND 5 SEMESTER 2 PHOTOGRAPHY WORKSHOP ABELARDO MORELL

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Anne Marie introduced us to Abelardo Morell and the Camera Obscura technique as part of her presentation at the weekend. This is one of his images

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WEEKEND 5 SEMESTER 2 PHOTOGRAPHY WORKSHOP SEAN HILLEN

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WEEKEND 5 SEMESTER 2 PHOTOGRAPHY WORKSHOP SEAN HILLEN

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Sean Hillen photomontage

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WEEKEND 5 SEMESTER 2 PHOTOGRAPHY WORKSHOP SEAN HILLEN

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WEEKEND 5 SEMESTER 2 PHOTOGRAPHY WORKSHOP SEAN HILLEN

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The second artist I chose to research from Anne Marie's presentation was San Hillen. I really love his photomontage work.So different from Hockney, Hillen's work has a sense of the ridiculous which relates to the photomontage of Dadaism and is a feature I really feel essential if you are going to use any found imagery.  This work influenced my second photomontage piece. (In final briefs padlet)

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WEEKEND 5 SEMESTER 2 PHOTOGRAPHY WORKSHOP DAVID HOCKNEY

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WEEKEND 5 SEMESTER 2 PHOTOGRAPHY WORKSHOP DAVID HOCKNEY

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Hockney interview in Rolling Stone magazine from 1990. I love the image of him lying down on his belly  making this photomontage! Having made a photomontage for Anne Marie's brief I realise its probably the most comfortable way to do it!

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"You have to come in daylight, because I have this little Wagner drive...."

'Wagner drive?" "You'll see." That's all he would say. I hung up the phone. David Hockney had agreed to be interviewed, and I headed to his Malibu, California, home to meet him, arriving there in the midafternoon. After an hour or so of talking, he told me it was time to go. When I suggested bringing my tape recorder - to continue the interview while we drove - he shook his head. "I don't think it will do you any good," he said. I eased myself into Hockney's chrome red two-seater Mercedes - a vintage convertible - and he backed the sleek machine out of his garage. He began to push buttons on a control panel that looked like something NASA had made and said, almost apologetically, "I'm losing my hearing, so I treated myself to a pretty good system...." He put the car in gear and sped north on the Pacific Coast Highway. "Twelve speakers."

David Hockney is best known for his work with paint and canvas, but he has also worked in media as diverse as Polaroid-photo collage and fax painting. He has designed opera sets and living rooms. So this piece - the Wagner drive - must be his latest. Hockney has been called the most important artist of the latter half of this century. He is inarguably one of the best known and most successful artists of our time, probably the most famous living artist. Yet his status as a great artist is hotly debated. The reaction against him is based partly on the accessibility of his work - it is intensely colorful, with friendly, palatable images. He paints interiors, portraits and landscapes; he is best known for his paintings of swimming pools. Although many of his paintings are abstract (he is obsessed by cubism), and intellectual games layer his work, most of Hockney's paintings are also very, very pretty. The critic Robert Hughes called Hockney the Cole Porter of modern art. He has been written off as an illustrator or a pop artist because he embraces unconventional forms, making art with laser printers and Xerox machines. And his paintings show up in places other than museums and galleries: He recently painted the cover of a telephone book.

In a way, Hockney is his own worst enemy - and not only because of the images he chooses to paint. He lives quietly in Los Angeles rather than in a fancy loft in New York's West Village. He likes his parents. He loves opera. In a world populated by shameless self-promoters, he is known for his grace, wit and charm - no bad drug habits. He has always been candid yet discreet about his sexuality. Hockney was born in 1937 in the small town of Bradford, in the north of England. He moved to London in 1959 to attend the prestigious Royal College of Art. There he became immersed in the counterculture that created Swinging London in the early Sixties. He first visited California in 1964 - discovering a paradise of sunshine, pools and boys - and moved there in 1978. From his studio in the hills above Hollywood, the prolific Hockney turns out a steady stream of work in traditional and experimental media.

In December the André Emmerich Gallery, in New York, will exhibit his new work, including large new paintings and a series of laser prints made from images taken with a still video camera. In January opera goers will see the sets he designed for the New York Metropolitan Opera's production of Mozart's Magic Flute. Currently he is working on sets for Puccini's Turandot, commissioned by the San Francisco and Chicago operas. When I arrived at his beach house in Malibu, his dachshunds, Boodgie and Stanley, met me with yelps and yaps. Hockney answered the door in wool slippers, green trousers and a green striped oxford shirt. Midway through the first interview session, he peered at me through glasses with root-beer-colored frames. "It's time," he said. "Time for the Wagner drive."

Jetting up the highway - the dachshunds curled under Hockney's feet - we whipped past the ocean on our left, fast-food restaurants on our right. From the twelve speakers blared "The Star-Spangled Banner," followed by a medley from West Side Story. We turned off the coast highway and headed toward the mountains. His hand moved to the switches and buttons on the control panel. Lights flickered. In a second, as we cruised onto a quiet road that sliced a tree-spotted valley, a piece from Wagner's Ring began. Hockney made several turns, slowing down or speeding up with the music. He had obviously choreographed this drive, and soon we - and the music - were winding through the mountains above Malibu. The music spiraled, and we spiraled, and then it built as we climbed. It soared as we soared, rounding another mountainous turn. Lights in a tunnel passed, synchronized with the staccato blasts of the music. And then, as we approached the crest of the mountain, Hockney slowed the car. We reached the top. Cymbals crashed. We wound around the last corner. More cymbals. The car picked up speed. The music reached a crescendo. We rounded the western slope of the mountain, and the sun appeared - a fiery orb, searing the green ocean. Pink clouds parted to let it slide - pffft - over the edge of the earth. There was silence for a moment, and then the music was softer and sweeter, and it began dancing lightly as we wound our way back toward earth, toward Hockney's seaside retreat, where we continued the interview.

I sort of enjoy it, actually. See, what's called the art world is actually a very tiny world, really. And anyway, didn't the early pioneers of modern art feel it wasn't just about art? They were changing many things.
Then why the extreme reaction against the fact that you've done more than painting on canvas?
They lost that belief. I didn't. In a sense, what I've done is subversive to all that the traditional art world is built upon.
In what way is it subversive?
On one hand, there is a movement towards unbelievable prices in art. On the other is a countermovement - fax art is essentially a Xerox copy, isn't it? What's it worth? Nothing. It makes them very nervous. They don't know what to do with it. But to me, that's what makes it great: You can send the exhibition anywhere. You can glue them on any wall.
Galleries must love that.
Especially since you can never get them off the walls; they'll be ruined. The work then becomes about one thing only. It's just for the pleasure of the eye. It can't be anything else. They're worthless financially, because you can make another just as good, really, or almost as good, or a hundred.
But you're also giving away your artwork.
That's true.
Many artists can't afford to do that.
I subsidize it from the paintings. But I used to give away paintings and drawings anyway. When they were cheap, who cared? That's what most artists do. But as they got more and more expensive, I found I couldn't give them away. You'd give them to some friend, and he thinks they're very nice, but eventually he just sees a pile of dollars on the wall and sells them.
Your paintings now sell for literally millions of dollars. How has that affected you?
I've always had sufficient money to do what I wanted to do, even when I didn't have much. Once you've got enough to do what you want to do, you're very rich, and you realize that. If you're painting away, which is what you want to do, what on earth would you want a lot of money for?
How did it feel when 'A Grand Procession of Dignitaries' went for $2 million?
It made me stop painting for a few years. I was very troubled by it. Someone must be very, very rich to buy a painting of mine. But if an artist can't really sell his work anymore to, say, professional people around his age, you wonder what they're being done for, or for whom. But with faxes or Xeroxes or laser prints, you can do any-thing you want. You can give them away, you can send them to Brazil or to Moscow, anywhere where there is a telephone, fax machine and a bit of paper.
Do you stay on top of what's going on in the art world?
I don't go out and see as much as I used to. I don't feel the desperate need for it. I have to work things out myself, as it were. When you're very young, you wish to be in the middle of a lot of activity because it's stimulating to you. You are adding to it and taking out of it. But there's a point in life where you don't need that crowd to do it. You have enough in your head to sort out. But I do go see shows.
And what do you find?
I must admit I'm pretty indifferent to what I see.
Do you follow pop culture - do you listen to rock & roll?
Very little.
Yet one of your earliest subjects for a painting was Cliff Richard.
I just thought he was sexy. I found a newspaper cutting once that said, 'Boy clings to cliff all night.' I put that in a picture. It was a cliff, of course, not Cliff, but I thought it was just funny. I never saw him in person, only on television. I did see Elvis - in Las Vegas in 1973. But I was brought up with opera and going to symphony concerts.
Since your first, 'Rake's Progress,' you have done more and more opera sets. What is it about opera that intrigues you? Opera doesn't exist until the performance begins. A group of artists works together to bring it to life. The collaboration fascinates me. You can make people see the music. Are you still taking lots of photographs?
I've lost interest in photography. I believe that the photograph is on its way to losing its veracity.

For 150 years the photograph has had a special position amongst pictures. You believed that at one point in time and space, something similar to what was in the photograph had been in front of a camera. Drawing and painting did not have that veracity. We don't necessarily believe photographs anymore. They can be used in manipulative ways - such as when Stalin took Trotsky out of a photograph to imply that he wasn't at Lenin's side when the revolution was happening. With computer technology, it will happen easier and more and more.
With what effect?
Now we see photography with a cynical eye. There will be less and less belief in photos or television-news footage, because we know it could well be altered. Soon there will be nothing more objective about a photograph than a painting. Nothing will be sacred. In the final scene of Casablanca, Humphrey Bogart walks off with Claude Rains. But a computer can now scan the whole movie and reconstruct it, so that you could have Bogart get on the plane.
Wouldn't you oppose that?
It's like the people who say we should not colorize old movies. They say it is taking a work of art and ruining it. That's a lot of poppycock. Those are not the arguments of artists, but the arguments of conservators. Artists have always taken other works of art and done things with them. It's like complaining that Duchamp put a mustache on the Mona Lisa.
Your newest paintings are very intimate - people's faces, your living room, the view from your porch, flowers.
Well, I hardly ever go out these days. Partly it's because I'm slowly losing my hearing.
Does it affect your painting?
Hearing helps locate you in space. When someone loses their eyesight, their hearing generally intensifies in some way. They learn to locate things spatially through sound. Without sound, you start locating things visually in a more intense way.
If you were only seeing, what would that mean to your painting?
Goya was stone deaf, and he painted all those screaming faces. I think deaf people are forced to move into a more intimate world.
The critic Gert Schiff used your picture of Christopher Isherwood and Don Bachardy as an example of your view that two people can spend a lifetime together and still really not know each other. Does that summarize how you feel about relationships?
Yes, actually. I'm deeply fascinated by relationships, especially that one. They shared a bed for thirty-two years. Not many people do that, straight or gay. And they were both artists. The fact they somehow made their life together fascinated me. I don't get it together that way.
What's the longest you've ever been able to maintain a relationship?
I lived with Peter Schlesinger five years. Certainly, four of them were very good. But I've always assumed, frankly, I would be alone most of the time.

First of all, because I'm an artist. Artists are not great people to live with. They tend to put their work first. Beyond that, a straight person starts a family. It's different if you are gay. You don't quite know how to organize your life.
But isn't that mostly because there aren't many models? I know gay men whose lives are organized quite similarly, although there are no children.
Chris and Don, for a lot of people, were a model. They seemed to me to lead honest lives. They seemed stable and honest with themselves. But homosexual men haven't figured it out.
Most heterosexuals haven't figured it out
They probably feel marriage is about love, which is a big mistake. When they get divorced, they find out it's all about property. I suppose that's why people get divorced so quick. They think marriage is about love or sexual passion. Well, that won't last.
If work comes first at the expense of a relationship, do you feel it's worth the trade-off?
I'm not sure you get the choice, really.
Has your life been more difficult because you are gay?
For me, homosexuality is just part of the texture of life. Life isn't smooth, thank goodness. Anyone who is aware of that is more tolerant about it. No two human beings are alike, and that seems to me the way it should be. All people are frail, so of course we should be tolerant.
You were showing homosexuality in your paintings from very early on. Many people wrestle with it for years before they are so free in their expression of it.
I just accepted it. If you're an artist, you have to understand your own feelings and not hide them.
Were you ever shy about painting nudity?
In every art school you paint nudes, although somehow they expected them not to be erotic. The male nude was always a very masculine, aggressive figure and wasn't seen as erotic at all.
Do you agree that there is a responsibility for any prominent homosexual to be open and honest about it - are you a proponent of outing?
I never actually announce anything unless people ask me about it. I'm a reasonably private person. I don't really think it's my job to go out and give big public lectures about it. Somebody else can do that. Nevertheless, one does one's bit by being who you are. Frankly, if anything comes up against me, I will act up strongly. I wouldn't let anybody tread on me, officials or anyone.
Did you get up in arms over the National Endowment for the Arts' handling of the Robert Mapplethorpe exhibit?
Not particularly. I don't think it was a question of censorship much. If it had been, I would have got up in arms, but I don't actually think it was. Nor do I think the pictures are that erotic, either. It's very, very good photography, but there's a coldness there, a terrible coldness. The point is that I know perfectly well art will go on, whether governments commit money or not.
Do you consider any of your art political?
First of all, what is political art? Painting is not just about content. To make an art that's really going to do something, then a painting has to be reproducible, because it has to be seen. If it's only seen by a few people, it's not a very good form of propaganda. And a lot of what's passed off as political art frankly doesn't even work as art. Still, I do feel I'm giving a message in my art: You shouldn't expect life to be great, but there are joys in it, sometimes very small and very close to you. That's a political message.
How important is art in society?
We need art. There's no society that never had it. Most of it might be pretty low, most of it might be pretty bad, but we need it. High art and low art is a critic's concept, not artists' concepts. Artists know that there is no real division between high art and low art. We need Johann Strauss, and we need Beethoven. Strauss might be about the froth of life, but the froth is there.
Is your work closer to Strauss or Beethoven?
That's not my job to answer. In some book, some critic said, "In the Thirties, if a movie critic had said Laurel and Hardy were great artists, most of the critics would have thought they were being facetious." I think that's unbelievably arrogant. In the Thirties millions of people did think they were great artists. Millions of people flocked to the movies and responded to them. Now we know they're lasting, which means they touch the universal much better than we thought.
But popular appeal can't be the arbiter: Millions of people love 'Rambo.'
Well, part of it is how long it lasts. Masses of art are made and immediately disappear. The Rambo films came, and an awful lot of people saw them, but how many people in the future will see them? If a few generations think the art is good, they're probably right.
How would you respond to the critic who said you're the most important artist of the last half century?
I would simply laugh at that.
On the other hand, some discount your work as illustration.
Illustration is used as a pejorative word. But Rembrandt's work is illustration, and a lot of marvelous art was illustration. I don't see it as a pejorative word at all.
Do you find it ironic that although you're British, your most well-known works are paintings of swimming pools? Why are you so fascinated by them?
If you've been to England, you know what a lovely blue, hedonistic pool means.
Besides the images themselves - swimming pools, palm trees - how did California affect your paintings?
There was more color here. I think van Gogh said, "There's more joy in the sun." He, too, was rather a puritanical northerner. Seeing the sun every day is a revelation if you were brought up in Gothic gloom like I was.
Your work has been criticized for exactly that: that it is bright and happy.
I think that's in one's personality.
Do you agree that internal angst or external repression is often what causes great art?
It depends. If you think everything was that bleak, why would you even make art? If you make art, you must feel it can be communicated in some way.
But isn't the truest art sometimes a primal expression of anguish - as in Munch or even van Gogh?
Well, van Gogh painted a lot of very, very happy pictures. But I believe that if you put van Gogh in the dullest room at a Holiday Inn for a week, he'd still come out with interesting paintings. He'd paint a frayed carpet He'd find something.
Do your paintings reflect your life?
My life is, I admit, a lot sadder than what my paintings might suggest. I can't see the sadness lifting, actually.
Sadness because of what?
Friends dying. of AIDS. When you have a lot of friends, your contemporaries, that die at relatively young ages, it's highly unusual. At first you think, "This is odd; he was younger than me." But when it gets to be about eighteen people, it is not simply odd. These are people whom I expected to grow old with.
Why doesn't that sadness filter into your paintings?
I don't see the world that way. In spite of it all, I do also see the world as beautiful. If we don't, I think, we're doomed.
Don't you, though, paint from your feelings - whether joy or sadness? Wouldn't you therefore paint a black canvas, at least metaphorically black?
Not yet.
Do you mean it's not that bad yet?
I hope it never gets that bad. It's the difference between American and Russian literature. Russians are pessimistic people, and Americans on the whole are optimistic people. It's our nature. I live in California. Look at the faces of the people in Romania or East Berlin. Faces in California are a lot more innocent. But it has gotten very bad for me, and it's getting worse. I have other friends who are sick now. I made the flower paintings for friends. I made laser prints of the paintings and sent them to friends who were ill, to pin up on the wall. The flowers I've been painting are not cut flowers, they're little plants growing. They're alive. And that's what it is about everything I paint: It's all about affirming life, isn't it?

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The Rolling Stone Interview: David Hockney, modern art maste

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"You have to come in daylight, because I have this little Wagner drive...." 'Wagner drive?" "You'll see." That's all he would say. I hung up the phone. David Hockney had agreed to be interviewed, and I headed to his Malibu, California, home to meet him, arriving there in the midafternoon.

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Weekend 5 SEMESTER 2 PHOTOGRAPHY WORKSHOP

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Weekend 5 SEMESTER 2 PHOTOGRAPHY WORKSHOP

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Anne Marie Walker asked us to research two photographers from her presentation in relation to photomontage work.I chose two. The first one is David Hockney, who I didn't really associate with photography, but really loved his photomontage work, which has influenced one of the pieces I made for this brief. I love this work.

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WEEKEND 5 SEMESTER 2 CLASS PAINTING BRIEF

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WEEKEND 5 SEMESTER 2 CLASS PAINTING BRIEF

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We also looked at the work of artist Paul Doran, which I loved.

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WEEKEND 5 SEMESTER 2 PAINTING CLASS BRIEF BERNARD FRIZE

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WEEKEND 5 SEMESTER 2 PAINTING CLASS BRIEF BERNARD FRIZE

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Weekend 5 SEMESTER 2  CLASS PAINTING BRIEF BERNARD FRIZE

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Weekend 5 SEMESTER 2  CLASS PAINTING BRIEF BERNARD FRIZE

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For the in class brief, Glenn asked us to make some colour paintings in the technique of using one brush stroke with several colours of paint using the example of Bernard Frize's work, which I really like.

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Bernard Frize (born 1954, Saint-Mandé, France) is a French painter who works in a variety of materials and utilizes a multitude of techniques. As an artist he explores the bare minimal essence of painting, devoid of conception and aesthetic, instead focusing on an industrial approach to making art. His work is highly process-oriented, often requiring unconventional tools, materials, and the assistance of others to complete a painting.

Frize looks at a painting as a search for an agreement between "nature", a viewer and a flat surface. He states at an interview with Jane Peterson, a journalist, "This is what my paintings are about and why they are not about the process. Nevertheless, the process is a way of engaging the viewer in a kind of simultaneity."

Frize's artworks have been exhibited extensively across Europe (Centre Pompidou in 2019) and the UK (Ikon Gallery in Birmingham, as one example), as well as recently in the United States. He is represented by the Galerie Emmanuel Perrotin in Paris and Miami, Simon Lee Gallery in London and Galerie Nächst St. Stephan in Vienna.

Frize lives and works in Paris, France as well as Berlin, Germany.

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Bernard Frize (born 1954, Saint-Mandé, France) is a French painter who works in a variety of materials and utilizes a multitude of techniques. As an artist he explores the bare minimal essence of painting, devoid of conception and aesthetic, instead focusing on an industrial approach to making art.

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WEEK 5 SEMESTER 2 PAINTING EXIT BRIEF HETEROTOPIA VINCENT J STOKER

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WEEK 5 SEMESTER 2 PAINTING EXIT BRIEF HETEROTOPIA VINCENT J STOKER

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I think these images by this French photographer really capture the 'otherness' of these grandiose abandoned buildings.

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Vincent J. Stoker explores the topographic vertigoes that are hidden in the interstices drawn by language.

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WEEKEND 5 SEMESTER 2 PAINTING EXIT BRIEF UTOPIA

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WEEKEND 5 SEMESTER 2 PAINTING EXIT BRIEF UTOPIA

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I found this piece of artwork to be quite amusing and clever - particularly as I am a big fan of biscuits!  William Dalton is a young British artist, a graduate of Central Saint Martin's in London.

The work comprises a  presentation box of 30 photographs of biscuits with either Utopia or Heterotopia descriptions on the back. For example, the Diet Biscuit is described as 'Utopia - with reduced fat and calories!

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The Biscuit Collection of Michel Foucault

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The Biscuit Collection of Michel Foucault by William Dalton on The Dots.

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WEEKEND 2 SEMESTER 2 PAINTING EXIT BRIEF HETEROTOPIA

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WEEKEND 2 SEMESTER 2 PAINTING EXIT BRIEF HETEROTOPIA

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This exit brief got me thinking about the heterotopic 'other' space we are now occupying, in relation to the Covid-19  lockdown. We are in a place which is not normal - either in time or space.  Even though the heterotopic space occurs within the familiar and physical space of our home, we are now occupying that space in a very different way . It has become a place of 'otherness'  - linked to a 'slice of time where we have been given a break from  traditional time',  as this documentary explains. In this case, the slice of time we have now  entered is that in which the global population battles against a deadly virus.  Our homes have become Heterotopic spaces  of 'other' as Foucault describes , which we have been allowed to enter for a time, to protect ourselves from serious illness and keep the doors closed to everyone except those we feel safe to 'invite' into this space'. Some homes have also become a temporary prison - a Heterotopia of Crisis or Deviation -  particularly for the elderly and vulnerable.  Within this place of 'otherness' our madness emerges, our mental health is vulnerable and our behaviour can be anything it cannot be in normal circumstances. This Heterotopic space occupies in the liminal place on the edge of normality. It verges on real life but isn't part of it. Nothing is remotely normal right now. We are all in this  temporary 'other' space where we wait and observe until the reality of life  begins again.

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WEEKEND 5 SEMESTER 2 PAINTING EXIT BRIEF FOUCAULT'S HETEROTOPIA AND THE FESTIVAL TENT 

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WEEKEND 5 SEMESTER 2 PAINTING EXIT BRIEF FOUCAULT'S HETEROTOPIA AND THE FESTIVAL TENT 

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Foucault's Heterotopia and the Festival Tent -  Victoria J E Jones

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WEEKEND 5 SEMESTER 2 PAINTING EXIT BRIEF HETEROTOPIA 

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WEEKEND 5 SEMESTER 2 PAINTING EXIT BRIEF HETEROTOPIA 

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A great little video outlining the main concept of Heterotopic spaces

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An Outline of Foucault's Six Principles of Heterotopia

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Film by Victoria J. E. Jones An outline of French philosopher Michel Foucault's Six Principles of Heterotopia...I realise that this is a bit rough (it was made in my lunch hour)...and that it isn't one minute thirty....ps. this is not an origami instruction video!

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WEEKEND 5 SEMESTER 2 HIERONYMOUS BOSCH DYSTOPIA

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WEEKEND 5 SEMESTER 2 HIERONYMOUS BOSCH DYSTOPIA

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The Last Judgement portrays the disintegration of the paradise into hell and the fall of humanity from grace.

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WEEKEND 5 SEMESTER 2 PAINTING EXIT BRIEF HIERONYMOUS BOSCH UTOPIA AND DYSTOPIA

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WEEKEND 5 SEMESTER 2 PAINTING EXIT BRIEF HIERONYMOUS BOSCH UTOPIA AND DYSTOPIA

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Bosch is probably one of the most well known names in painting scenes of Utopia and Dystopia . His works were often triptychs which portrayed a paradise and a hell. Perhaps his most famous painting is The Garden of Earthly Delights, painted somewhere between 1490 and 1510. Image below, this is an altar piece with religious meaning, featuring creation, the early paradise and then a depiction of hell as humans begin to fall from grace.

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WEEKEND 5 SEMESTER 2 PAINTING EXIT BRIEF ZDZISLAW BEKSINSKI DYSTOPIA 

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WEEKEND 5 SEMESTER 2 PAINTING EXIT BRIEF ZDZISLAW BEKSINSKI DYSTOPIA 

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I started my secondary research for this brief with this artist I have never heard of before. This article gives a synopsis of the life of Zdzislaw Beksinksi a Polish artist who was murdered in 2005. A selection of images below and more on the link.  Very haunting images, paintings but they almost look like prints. I think they are amazing paintings - couldn't find any names for them so assuming they are untitled. But they certain visualize a world that has gone horribly wrong.

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Polish Artist’s Terrifying Art And His Sad Life Story

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Apocalyptic and dystopian art has been popular since about the 90’s. Few works are darker than those of Zdzislaw Beksinski.

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WEEKEND 5 SEMESTER 2 PAINTING EXIT BRIEF 

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WEEKEND 5 SEMESTER 2 PAINTING EXIT BRIEF 

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During the weekend, Glenn Loughran gave us a brief for 3 paintings, to include an embedded photograph and text, with the themes of:

UTOPIA - NEUTRAL COLOUR SCHEME

DYSTOPIA - ANALOGOUS COLOUR SCHEME

HETEROTOPIA - TRIADIC COLOUR SCHEME

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WEEKEND 5 SEMESTER 2 MICHEL FOUCAULT KEY CONCEPTS

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WEEKEND 5 SEMESTER 2 MICHEL FOUCAULT KEY CONCEPTS

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Michel Foucault: key concepts

This page offers brief definitions of some of the key concepts in Foucault's work. For a more complete list which also includes extensive details of where these concepts can be found in Foucault's work please see Appendix 2: 'Key Concepts in Foucault's work' in my book Michel Foucault (London: Sage, 2005). The list below places more emphasis on definitions, whereas the list in the book provides a detailed structure of references for users of Foucault's work.
If there are any key concepts that are not on this list but that you would like to see here send me an email and I will see what I can do.
© Clare O'Farrell 2007-2021

apparatus (dispositif)

Foucault generally uses this term to indicate the various institutional, physical and administrative mechanisms and knowledge structures, which enhance and maintain the exercise of power within the social body. The original French term dispositif is rendered variously as 'dispositif', 'apparatus' and 'deployment' in English translations of Foucault's work

archaeology

'Archaeology' is the term Foucault used during the 1960s to describe his approach to writing history. Archaeology is about examining the discursive traces and orders left by the past in order to write a 'history of the present'. In other words archaeology is about looking at history as a way of understanding the processes that have led to what we are today.

archaeology versus genealogy

Foucault's remarks on the difference between archaeology and genealogy are generally rather vague and confusing. The tools Foucault uses to practice both methods are to all intents and purposes the same. But, if archaeology addresses a level at which differences and similarities are determined, a level where things are simply organized to produce manageable forms of knowledge, the stakes are much higher for genealogy. Genealogy deals with precisely the same substrata of knowledge and culture, but Foucault now describes it as a level where the grounds of the true and the false come to be distinguished via mechanisms of power.

archive

This is a technical term Foucault uses in The Archaeology of Knowledge. It designates the collection of all material traces left behind by a particular historical period and culture. In examining these traces one can deduce the historical a priori of the period and then if one is looking at science, one can deduce the episteme of the period. None of these concepts has predictive value - they are all descriptions of limited historical orders.

the arts of existence (life as a work of art)

Foucault defines 'techniques of the self' or 'arts of existence' as 'those reflective and voluntary practices by which men not only set themselves rules of conduct, but seek to transform themselves, to change themselves in their singular being, and to make of their life into an Foucault (1992) [1984]. oeuvre that carries certain aesthetic values and meets certain stylistic criteria'.
The Use of Pleasure. The History of Sexuality: Volume Two. Tr. R. Hurley. Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin, pp. 10-11.

author/artist

Foucault described traditional notions of the author as being restrictive. The author is a category or way of organising texts which has a history and needs to be challenged. For example, the psychological entity of the author and the use of the author as a way of organising texts are two different things and need to be treated separately.

biopower

Foucault argues that biopower is a technology which appeared in the late eighteenth century for managing populations. It incorporates certain aspects of disciplinary power. If disciplinary power is about training the actions of bodies, biopower is about managing the births, deaths, reproduction and illnesses of a population.

body

Foucault is particularly concerned with the relations between political power and the body, and describes various historical ways of training the body to make it socially productive. The body is an element to be managed in relation to strategies of the economic and social management of populations.

confession

Foucault says that the religious practice of confession was secularised in the 18th and 19th centuries. People were incited to confess to their innermost desires and sexual practices. These confessions then became data for the social sciences which used the knowledge to construct mechanisms of social control. Thus Foucault argues that modern confession acts as a form of power-knowledge.

confinement

In History of Madness Foucault describes a movement across Europe in the seventeenth century which saw the establishment of institutions which locked up people who were deemed to be 'unreasonable'. This included not only mad people, but the unemployed, single mothers, defrocked priests, failed suicides, heretics, prostitutes, debauchees in short anyone who was deemed to be socially unproductive or disruptive. He labels this movement the 'Great Confinement'. He continues his study of confinement in his history of the birth of the prison Discipline and Punish.

culture

Foucault describes culture as 'a hierarchical organization of values, accessible to everybody, but at the same time the occasion of a mechanism of selection and exclusion'.Foucault (2001).
L'hermeneutique du sujet. Cours au Collège de France, 1981-1982. Paris: Gallimard Seuil, p. 173.

death penalty

Foucault was opposed to the death penalty and expressed his views on this issue in the public media on a number of occasions.

discipline

Discipline is a mechanism of power which regulates the behaviour of individuals in the social body. This is done by regulating the organisation of space (architecture etc.), of time (timetables) and people's activity and behaviour (drills, posture, movement). It is enforced with the aid of complex systems of surveillance. Foucault emphasizes that power is not discipline, rather discipline is simply one way in which power can be exercised. He also uses the term 'disciplinary society', discussing its history and the origins and disciplinary institutions such as prisons, hospitals, asylums, schools and army barracks. Foucault also specifies that when he speaks of a 'disciplinary society' he does not mean a 'disciplined society'.

discontinuity

Foucault continually uses the principles of discontinuity, break and difference in his analyses, in order to undermine philosophical notions of unchanging essences in history. These essences include the 'Man' and 'human nature' and 'great man' of humanist philosophies. Discontinuity also challenges notions of cause, effect, progress, destiny, tradition and influence in history.

discourse

Discourse is as Foucault admits himself a rather slippery notion in his work but at the most basic level he uses the term to refer to the material verbal traces left by history. He also uses it to describe 'a certain "way of speaking"'.Foucault (1972) [1969].
The Archaeology of Knowledge. Tr. A. M. Sheridan Smith. London: Tavistock, p. 193.
For yet another definition of discourse as a strategic element in a generalised social battle see " Le discours ne doit pas être pris comme... ", Dits Ecrits, Tome III Texte n°186

discursive formation

The discursive formation is roughly equivalent to a scientific discipline.

discursive practice

This term refers to a historically and culturally specific set of rules for organizing and producing different forms of knowledge. It is not a matter of external determinations being imposed on people's thought, rather it is a matter of rules which, a bit like the grammar of a language, allow certain statements to be made.

episteme

This term, which Foucault introduces in his book The Order of Things, refers to the orderly 'unconscious' structures underlying the production of scientific knowledge in a particular time and place. It is the 'epistemological field' which forms the conditions of possibility for knowledge in a given time and place. It has often been compared to T.S Kuhn's notion of paradigm.

ethics

Ethics concerns the kind of relation one has to oneself. The essential condition for the practice of ethics is freedom, the ability to choose one action, not another. Foucault makes a distinction between moral codes (which are simply collections of rules and precepts) and ethics. He suggests there are four aspects to how the individual constitutes him/herself as the moral subject of his or her own actions. The first aspect relates to the part of the individual which acts as the focus of moral conduct. The second aspect concerns what makes an individual recognize their moral obligations. The third aspect relates to the means by which individuals transform and work on themselves. The fourth aspect concerns what sort of person an individual might want to be.

Foucault's ethics

Foucault, in spite of the accusations levelled against him of political and ethical nihilism, had firm views on the kind of ethical approach that he wanted to take in his work. He argued that he wanted to render certain taken-for-granted exercises of power 'intolerable', by exposing them to scrutiny. He argues that the exercise of power only remains tolerable by covering up its tracks. He saw it as part of his task, to make people aware of how intolerable some previously taken-for-granted exercises of power actually were and show them that things could be different.

event

An event is something that has a beginning and an end. Every human experience, activity, idea and cultural form can be analyzed as an event or as a series of events. Foucault uses the event as a way of arguing against universal metaphysical essences in history.

eventalisation

For a definition by Foucault see first paragraph here

exclusion (of individuals and groups)

The examination of the situation of people existing on the margins of society is one of the mainstays of Foucault's work. His analysis focuses on the 'negative structures' of society or excluded groups, as opposed to more traditional approaches which focus on the mainstream.

experience

Foucault defines an experience as an interrelation between knowledge, 'types of normativity' and subjectivity in a particular culture at a particular time.(Foucault (1992) [1984].
The Use of Pleasure. The History of Sexuality: Volume Two. Tr. R. Hurley. Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin, intro.

fiction

On a number of occasions Foucault describes his work as 'fictions'. By this he does not mean that what he is saying is not true, rather that his writings are constructed 'stories' about the real, not transparent representations of what is really out there.

foundations/ non-reductionism

Foucault often argues against the idea that there is a single foundation for knowledge or a single explanation for all human activity and social organization. There is no one principle which explains everything else. Instead it is a question of the interrelation of a complex and multilayered range of elements.

freedom

Foucault notes that he believes 'solidly in human freedom'. He also argues against nineteenth century and existentialist views of an abstract freedom and a 'free' subject, and says that freedom is a practice rather than a goal to be achieved. Knowledge starts with rules and constraints, not freedom. Freedom is also a condition for the exercise of power.

gaze

This is a term that Foucault introduces in his 1963 book The Birth of the Clinic. The French word 'le regard' poses difficulties for translation into English as the translator Alan Sheridan notes. It can mean glance, gaze, look which do not have the abstract connotations that the word has in French. Foucault uses the word to refer to the fact that it is not just the object of knowledge which is constructed but also the knower. Clinical medicine at the end of the eighteenth century set much store on visibility - on looking and seeing and on visible symptoms

genealogy

Genealogy is the term Foucault uses to describe his historical method during the 1970s. See also archaeology vs genealogy

governmentality

Foucault originally used the term 'governmentality' to describe a particular way of administering populations in modern European history within the context of the rise of the idea of the State. He later expanded his definition to encompass the techniques and procedures which are designed to govern the conduct of both individuals and populations at every level not just the administrative or political level. This includes the notion of self-government.

heterotopia

'Heterotopia' is a word coined by Foucault to mean a space which is outside everyday social and institutional space, for example trains, motels and cemeteries.

historical a priori

This is the order underlying any given culture at any given period of history. Foucault also uses the phrase the 'positive unconscious of knowledge' to refer to the same idea. The episteme which describes scientific forms of knowledge is a subset of this.

history and historiography

Foucault's entire philosophy is based on the assumption that human knowledge and existence are profoundly historical. He argues that what is most human about man is his history. He discusses the notions of history, change and historical method at some length at various points in his career. He uses history as a means of demonstrating that there is no such thing as historical necessity, that things could have been and could be otherwise.

history of the present

Foucault describes his work on a number of occasions as the history or the diagnosis of the present, as the analysis of 'what today is'. He notes that our own times and lives are not the beginning or end of some 'historical' process, but a period like, but at the same time unlike, any other. The question should simply be 'how is today different from yesterday?'

humanism and the death of man

During the 1960s, Foucault was noted for his critiques of humanist philosophy, which is founded on the belief that something called 'human nature' or 'man' is at the centre of all knowledge and morality. Foucault also linked the death of man to the death of God.

ideology

Generally, Foucault did not find the notion of ideology to be a particularly useful one and when he does refer to it, it is usually to criticize it, arguing that the notion (1) presupposes a 'truth' to which ideology stands in opposition, (2) implies that it is secondary to a material 'infrastructure' and (3) proposes a universal subject.

identity

Although Foucault's work is often hailed as one of the inspirations for various identity movements, Foucault himself favours the dissolution of identity, rather than its creation or maintenance. He sees identity as a form of subjugation and a way of exercising power over people and preventing them from moving outside fixed boundaries.

individuals and individualization

Foucault argues that the individual is not something that needs to be liberated rather the individual is the closely monitored product of relations between power and knowledge.

institutions

Foucault notes that institutions are a way of freezing particular relations of power so that a certain number of people are advantaged.

interpretation, commentary and hermeneutics

Foucault, on a number of occasions, draws attention to and criticizes the practice of 'interpretation' which endlessly searches for the 'hidden meaning' and 'truth' behind texts and for what they 'really mean'. Rather than looking for 'hidden depths', Foucault advocates the treatment of texts as flat surfaces across which one can discern patterns of order.

Iran

In 1978, Foucault wrote a controversial series of reports on the Iranian revolution. Foucault was particularly interested in the notion of a 'political spirituality' which he saw emerging in relation to events in Iran. He defines 'political spirituality' as the will to create a new division of the true and the false via a new government of self and others. For a very useful discussion on this notion and the misconceptions of contemporary critics in response to Foucault's term see Michel Foucault and Farès Sassine, There Can't Be Societies without Uprisings, Foucault Studies, Translation by Alex J. Feldman, No. 25, October 2018, 324-350, DOI: 10.22439/fs.v25i2.5588

Marx and Marxism

Foucault is well known for his controversial statements in 1966 that 'Marxism exists in nineteenth century thought like a fish in water: that is, it is unable to breathe anywhere else' and that it was a mere 'storm ... in a children's paddling pool' ( The Order of Things,, Tavistock, 1970, p. 262). For a brief period after 1968 Foucault's comments on Marxism as a form of political activity became more favourable. He subsequently returned to his earlier views on the historical specificity of Marxism and to criticisms of the inflated claims made by Marxists in relation to Marx's work.

morality and moral systems

Foucault defines morality as a set of values and rules for action which are proposed to individuals and groups by diverse institutions such as the family, education systems or churches. He argues that 'the good' is something that is practised, not discovered.

non-discursive practices

In Foucault (1967). On the ways of writing history. In (1998). The Archaeology of Knowledge Foucault lists non-discursive practices as including 'institutions, political events, economic practices and processes' (p.162). He also argues that discourse does not underlie all cultural forms. Forms such as art and music are not discursive. He also notes: 'there is nothing to be gained from describing this autonomous layer of discourses unless one can relate it to other layers, practices, institutions, social relations, political relations, and so on. It is that relationship which has always intrigued me'.
Aesthetics, Method and Epistemology. The Essential Works of Michel Foucault 1954-1984. Volume Two. J. D. Faubion. (Ed.). Tr. Robert Hurley and others. Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Allen Lane, Penguin, p. 284.

normal and the pathological, normalization

Foucault argues that contemporary society is a society based on medical notions of the norm, rather than on legal notions of conformity to codes and the law. Hence criminals need to be 'cured' of a disease not punished for an infraction of the law. There is a insoluble tension between a system based on law and a system based on medical norms in our legal and medical institutions.

Panopticon, panopticism and surveillance

The Panopticon, was a design for a prison produced by Jeremy Bentham in the late eighteenth century which grouped cells around a central viewing tower. Although the prison was never actually built the idea was used as a model for numerous institutions including some prisons. Foucault uses this as a metaphor for the operation of power and surveillance in contemporary society.

parrhesia

For Foucault's own definitions of parrhesia see Foucault, The Meaning and Evolution of the Word Parrhesia in Discourse & Truth: the Problematization of Parrhesia, 1999

phenomenology

Foucault argues that if phenomenology seeks to discover an authentic, founding subject through the analysis of everyday life, he, on the other hand, is aiming at the dissolution of notions of a fixed subject, so that he and others can always be different.

philosophy

Foucault changed his mind many times about the role played by philosophy and the philosopher or intellectual. One thing that remained constant however, was that philosophy should be firmly rooted in a historical context. Foucault frequently emphasized that philosophy should deal with the question of what is happening right now. He also defines the task of philosophy as being not a way of reflecting on what is true and what is false, but instead a way of reflecting on our relations to truth and how we should conduct ourselves.

postmodernism and modernity

Foucault did not comment on the term 'postmodernity' beyond saying how vague and imprecise it was, making a subtly ironic reference to 'an enigmatic and troubling "postmodernity"'. He says that he prefers to discuss how 'modernity' has been historically defined.

power

Foucault argues a number of points in relation to power and offers definitions that are directly opposed to more traditional liberal and Marxist theories of power. It is important to note that Foucault refined his definitions of power over time and his views are not homogeneous.
definitions

1. power is not a thing but a relation

2. power is not simply repressive but it is productive

3. power is not simply a property of the State.Power is not something that is exclusively localized in government and the State (which is not a universal essence). Rather, power is exercised throughout the social body.

4. power operates at the most micro levels of social relations. Power is omnipresent at every level of the social body.

5. the exercise of power is strategic and war-like

types of power
sovereign power
Sovereign power involves obedience to the law of the king or central authority figure. Foucault argues that 'disciplinary power' gradually took over from 'sovereign power' in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Even now, however, remnants of sovereign power still remain in tension with disciplinary power.

disciplinary power see discipline

pastoral power
The modern State, Foucault argues, consists of the convergence of a very particular set of techniques, rationalities and practices designed to govern or guide people's conduct as individual members of a population and also to organize them as a political and civil collective in the same way as a shepherd who cares for his flock from birth to death. This idea of politically organizing the day to day conduct of the population is borrowed from the metaphor of the care of a shepherd for his flock and originated in Egyptian, Assyrian, Mesopotamian and Hebrew cultures.

power-knowledge

One of the most important features of Foucault's view is that mechanisms of power produce different types of knowledge which collate information on people's activities and existence. The knowledge gathered in this way further reinforces exercises of power. Foucault refutes the idea that he makes the claim 'knowledge is power' and says that he is interested in studying the complex relations between power and knowledge without saying they are the same thing.

practices

Foucault notes that he is interested in analyzing 'regimes of practice', not institutions, theories or ideologies.

problematizations/ the history of problems

Foucault explains that he is more interested in writing a history of problems rather than a history of solutions or in writing the comprehensive history of a period or an institution. He describes the history of thought as 'the analysis of the way an unproblematic field of experience or set of practices which were accepted without question... becomes a problem, raises discussion and debate, incites new reactions, and induces a crisis in the previously silent behaviour, habits, practices and, institutions'.Foucault (2001),
Fearless Speech, Los Angeles: Semiotext(e), p. 74
For a good discussion of problematization see this article by Clive Barnett

Reason, rationality and irrationality

Foucault criticizes the notion that Reason is synonymous with truth and that it offers the solution to all social problems. He notes that repressive systems of social control are usually highly rational. The notions of rationality and irrationality, as they were posed by the Frankfurt School, became a fashionable topic of discussion in the late 1970s. In this context Foucault notes the dangers of describing Reason as the enemy and the equal danger of claiming that any criticism of rationality leads to irrationality.

regimes of truth

Foucault defines 'regimes of truth' as the historically specific mechanisms which produce discourses which function as true in particular times and places.

religion

If Foucault's discussions on 'sprirituality' (self-transfomation) are well-known, it has often been calimed that he seldom discusses organized religion at any length. However, recent publications of his lectures reveal fairly developed accounts of the history of Christianity both as a social institution (Church) and in terms of its internal conceptual apparatus (sacraments, the division between clerics and the laity and so on). Foucault also examines resistances to the pastoral power exercised by the Church such as mysticism, asceticism, and various Gnostic and other heresies.

resistance to power and the limits of power

Foucault suggests that there are a number of ways in which the exercise of power can be resisted. He argues at one point that resistance is co-extensive with power, namely as soon as there is a power relation, there is a possibility of resistance. If there is no such thing as a society without relations of power, this does not mean that existing power relations cannot be criticized. It is not a question of an 'ontological opposition' between power and resistance, but a matter of quite specific and changing struggles in space and time. There is always the possibility of resistance no matter how oppressive the system.

science

A scientific practice, in Foucault's account, is a particular set of codified relations between a precisely constructed knower and a precisely constructed object, with strict rules which govern the formation of concepts. Foucault was interested in science for a number of reasons. One of these was that 'science' had set itself up as the ultimate form of rational thought. With the Enlightenment, scientific reason became the privileged way of accessing truth. According to this view for knowledge to acquire value as 'truth', it had to constantly strive to become 'scientific', to construct and organize concepts according to certain rigorous criteria of scientificity. Foucault argues that scientific knowledge is not inherently 'superior' or more 'true' than other forms of knowledge.

self, techniques of

See arts of existence and ethics

sexuality

In the first volume of The History of Sexuality Foucault notes that according to current received wisdom, the end of the seventeenth century marked the beginning of a repressive regime of censorship and prudishness with regards to sexuality. Reversing this argument he suggests instead that never before had there been so much attention focused on sexuality and the nineteenth century in fact saw the emergence of an enormous proliferation of knowledge and the development of multiple mechanisms of control in relation to sexuality.

spirituality

Foucault defines 'spirituality' as the methods the subject uses to transform him or herself in order to gain access to the truth. He describes the conflict between spirituality and theology as being the important historical issue rather than a conflict between spirituality and science. Foucault also recasts the standard Church versus State opposition as instead an opposition between pastoral and sovereign forms of power. Foucault notes a number of differences in the ways pre-Cartesian and post-Cartesian systems approached the problem of acquiring knowledge and the notion of self-transformation. He describes this as the difference between the 'spiritual exercises' and 'intellectual method'.

the State

Foucault argues that the State is a codification of relations of power at all levels across the social body. It is a concept which provides a 'scheme of intelligibility for a whole group of already established institutions and realities'. Further, 'the State is a practice not a thing'. Foucault emphasizes that the State is not the primary source of power.Foucault (2004)
Sécurité, territoire, population. Cours au Collège de France, 1977-1978. Paris: Gallimard Seuil, pp. 294, 282.

structuralism

Structuralism was a philosophical movement which achieved its heyday in the 1960s. Styles of thought characterized as structuralist were notable for the fact that they adopted linguistics in the form developed by the Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure who died in 1913 as a methodological model, and applied it to a very diverse range of disciplines.
Much has been made of Foucault's protests that he was not a structuralist, but up until the late 1960s, he was quite willing to identify himself with the movement. There is no doubt that Foucault was, and in fact, always remained, closely aligned to the structuralist movement, if we define 'structuralism' as a movement focused on the examination of the relations between things and their structures at every level of culture and knowledge, as opposed to attempts to describe things in their essence. Structuralism also rejected the whole notion of an unchanging and universal human subject or human nature as being at the centre and origin of all action, history, existence and meaning. But where Foucault parted company with the structuralists, and one of the major reasons for his insistence that he was not associated with the movement, was his rejection of the ahistorical formalism often adopted by those espousing structuralist method.

subject

The subject is an entity which is self-aware and capable of choosing how to act. Foucault was consistently opposed to nineteenth century and phenomenological notions of a universal and timeless subject which was at the source of how one made sense of the world, and which was the foundation of all thought and action. The problem with this conception of the subject according to Foucault and other thinkers in the 1960s, was that it fixed the status quo and attached people to specific identities that could never be changed.

technology, technique, techne

Foucault defines the Greek word techne as 'a practical rationality governed by a conscious aim'. Foucault generally prefers the word 'technology', which he uses to encompass the broader meanings of techne. Foucault often uses the words techniques and technologies interchangeably, although sometimes techniques tend to be specific and localized and technologies more general collections of specific techniques.

terrorism

Foucault's comments on this subject have lost none of their relevance today. He argues that terrorism is counter-productive even on its own terms, since it merely entrenches those attacked further in their own world view. He also notes that one of the reasons terrorism is so unsettling is that it undermines the citizens' faith in the capacity of the State to guarantee their security. Those who govern, likewise unsettled, then have an excuse to introduce stricter social and legal regulation as a result.

truth

Truth is a major theme in Foucault's work, in particular in the context of its relations with power, knowledge and the subject. He argues that truth is an event which takes place in history. It is something that 'happens', and is produced by various techniques (the 'technology' of truth) rather than something that already exists and is simply waiting to be discovered. Foucault argues that 'the effect of truth' he wants to produce consists in 'showing that the real is polemical'. Foucault further notes that he is not interested in 'telling the truth', in his writing; rather, he is interested in inviting people to have a particular experience for themselves.

universal categories

Foucault was firmly and consistently opposed to the notion of universal categories and essences, 'things' that existed in unchanged form in all times and places such as the State, madness, sexuality, criminality and so on. These things only acquire a real (and changing) existence as the result of specific historical activities and reflection.

Utopias

Foucault argued that designing a social system to replace the current one merely produced another system which was still part of the current problem.

women and feminism

Foucault is often criticized for his lack of interest in the situation of women. When he does mention the feminist movement, however, it is usually to express his support. He also states very clearly that if there should be freedom of sexual choice, freedom of sexual acts such as rape should not be permitted. Foucault criticizes Ancient Greek ethical systems in relation to women and their exclusively male-centred approach describing them as an 'ethics of men made for men'.

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Michel Foucault: key concepts This page offers brief definitions of some of the key concepts in Foucault's work. For a more complete list which also includes extensive details of where these concepts can be found in Foucault's work please see Appendix 2: 'Key Concepts in Foucault's work' in my book Michel Foucault (London: Sage, 2005).

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WEEKEND 3 SEMESTER 2 THE ART OF SLOW LOOKING PODCAST

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WEEKEND 3 SEMESTER 2 THE ART OF SLOW LOOKING PODCAST

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Fascinating podcast on the Tate website about how to look slowly at an artwork to deeply analyse and engage with it.

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How long do you usually spend looking at art in a gallery? What if, instead of looking briefly at many artworks, we look slowly at a few?

In this episode, we hear from a psychologist and former monk about how the act of looking slowly at objects affects the way we understand them. Tate volunteers and visitors also describe their slow looking experiences and share some tips and techniques that you can try out on your next visit.

This podcast features Bumi Thomas, Nicole Mollett, Rebecca Chamberlain, Aidan Hart and Enrica Franca.
The Art of Slow Looking is a Boom Shakalaka production for Tate, produced by Eliza Lomas. Want to listen to more of our podcasts? Subscribe on Acast, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts or Spotify.

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The Art of Slow Looking - Podcast | Tate

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How long do you usually spend looking at art in a gallery? What if, instead of looking briefly at many artworks, we look slowly at a few? In this episode, we hear from a psychologist and former monk about how the act of looking slowly at objects affects the way we understand them.

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WEEKEND 4 SEMESTER 2 CONTANTIN BRANCUSI BIO 

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WEEKEND 4 SEMESTER 2 CONTANTIN BRANCUSI BIO 

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Biography of Constantin Brâncuși

Childhood

The second of four children, Brâncuși was born in the small farming village of Hobitza, Romania, in 1876. He had a difficult childhood, in part due to challenging relationships with his father, a property manager of a monastery, and the children from his previous marriage. After several attempts to leave home, Brâncuși finally did so permanently in 1887, at the age of eleven.

Early Training

From 1889 to 1893, Brâncuși lived in the Romanian city of Craiova, working variously as a waiter, cabinet-maker, and fortune-teller, while attending the School of Arts and Crafts part-time. In 1894, he enrolled full-time at the school, where he excelled in woodworking and ultimately graduated with honors in 1898. Brâncuși then studied modeling and life sculpture at Bucharest's National School of Fine Arts (1898-1902), winning awards for his work in competitions. In 1904, he moved from Romania to Paris, famously travelling most of the way on foot. This story became part of the legend surrounding Brâncuși as a peasant with an exotic heritage; the mythology was actively promoted by the artist himself, who took to wearing Romanian peasant clothing, even on formal occasions, and carved all of his own furniture.

From 1905 to 1907, Brâncuși trained in sculpture and modeling at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, in the sculpture studio of Antonin Mercie. Brâncuși began working as a studio assistant to Auguste Rodin in 1907, but left after only a month, explaining, "Nothing grows under the shadow of big trees." Yet, his month-long tenure in Rodin's workshop was critical in shaping Brâncuși's aesthetic, taking Rodin's work as a point of departure from which to develop his own drastically different artistic practice, characterized by the use of Direct Carving rather than working from a clay model.

Mature Period

After leaving Rodin's studio, Brâncuși began establishing his own style, beginning with squared works such as The Kiss (1907-08). Despite having the same title as one of Rodin's most famous sculptures, Brâncuși's work was its complete opposite in material and its handling of form and subject. Around 1909, Brâncuși started creating smoother, more contoured sculptures in marble and bronze. He produced multiple, yet distinct versions of works such as The Kiss, Maiastra, and Sleeping Muse, and, by 1912, this career-long method of creating serial versions on the same theme was an established practice in his oeuvre.

Brâncuși's work made its American debut in 1913, when five of his sculptures appeared in the Armory Show in New York. This landmark exhibition brought together new and avant-garde European and American art, much of which was highly controversial. Marcel Duchamp, whose work was also extremely challenging to critics, became an important friend, advocate, and collector of Brancusi's sculptures. While many critics were puzzled by Brâncuși's work, artists flocked to him, and many began collecting his work. Although Brâncuși lived in Paris for most of his life, making only a few trips to New York, he acknowledged the importance of American collectors and critics to his career, saying, "Without the Americans, I could never have produced all that, nor even perhaps have existed."

The photographer Alfred Stieglitz gave Brâncuși his first solo show at his Photo-Secession Gallery in New York in 1914. This successful exhibition also marked the first purchase by collector and modern art advocate John Quinn, who became one of Brâncuși's greatest patrons. That same year, Brâncuși began taking photographs. Many of his photos were of his own studio, recording the specific ways he organized the arrangement of his works, which was highly significant to his creative process, as he considered the base of the sculpture to be just as important as the sculpture itself.

Brâncuși's work continued to provoke public controversy. His Princess X caused a scandal at the 1920 Salon des Indépendants in Paris for its phallic form. Bird in Space became embroiled in a 1927-28 legal battle over the very definition of art when customs officials refused to recognize Bird in Space as artwork, exempting it from customs duties. In response, Edward Steichen, the photographer and owner of the piece, filed a lawsuit. The ruling in Brâncuși's favor constituted a success for abstract art in general. It was also in 1927 that Isamu Noguchi, perhaps Brâncuși's most famous student, worked as his studio assistant.

Late Period

In the 1930s, Brâncuși engaged in discussions with the Maharajah of Indore about building a temple in India, but the public sculpture was never executed. In 1937-38, he created a monumental three-part public artwork for Tirgu-Jiu, Romania, to honor the Romanian soldiers who had fallen in World War I. Spread across a mile of the town, Table of Silence, Gate of the Kiss, and Endless Column treat sacred, spiritual themes. However, like many of his other works, Endless Column has been a source of dispute. In the 1950s, a Communist attempted to dismantle the work, citing it as a corrupt example of Western art. The sculpture remained standing, but was badly damaged, and eventually underwent a lengthy and controversial conservation effort.

Brâncuși received his first retrospective in 1955 at the Guggenheim Museum in New York. Throughout his life, he had carefully arranged and documented the placement of sculptures in his Paris studio. Just prior to his death in 1957, he left his studio to the city's Museum of Modern Art with the proviso that it be preserved. It is currently reconstructed in a Renzo Piano-designed building outside the Pompidou Center.

The Legacy of Constantin Brâncuși

Brâncuși was a pioneering force in modern sculpture, paving the way for many generations of artists. His use of biomorphic forms and integration of his sculptures with their bases influenced the work of such artists as Isamu Noguchi, another major contributor to 20 th-century sculpture. Brâncuși's embrace of his materials' distinctive qualities and focus on the technique of Direct Carving were taken up by such sculptors as Henry Moore, Barbara Hepworth, and Jacob Epstein. With its pared-down aesthetic, the reduced forms of his sculptures also had a major impact on the artists associated with the Minimalist movement of the 1960s.

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Constantin Brâncuși Biography, Life & Quotes

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The second of four children, Brâncuși was born in the small farming village of Hobitza, Romania, in 1876. He had a difficult childhood, in part due to challenging relationships with his father, a property manager of a monastery, and the children from his previous marriage.

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Article on famous sculptors from My Modern Net

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Rodin, Michelangelo, Donatello-these are the names of the innovative visionaries behind some of the greatest sculptures in art history. Sculptors like these gifted creatives have the unique opportunity to bring their subjects to life and manipulate materials to defy the expectations of spectators. Whether chiseling marble or casting in bronze, there is no denying the power of sculpture.

Throughout history, there have been famous sculptors who have withstood the test of time. Perhaps they are valued for their ability to create highly realistic figures or maybe they are prized for their willingness to push boundaries and defy expectations. Regardless of their style, we've rounded up a collection of great sculptors who have created some of the most recognized pieces of Western art in history.

From the ancient Greeks to 20th-century Modernists, this look at 15 famous sculptors is a timeline of the development of Western art. Without each artist's contributions, it would be difficult to imagine visual culture as we now know it.

Learn more about 15 of the most famous sculptors in Western art.

Though it's difficult to know much about the great sculptors of ancient Greece, one name has stood the test of time. Thanks to the work of great authors like Pliny the Elder and Vitruvius, Praxiteles has become a name synonymous with ancient Greek sculpture. None of his original statues survived, but we are familiar with his work thanks to Roman copies of the originals. The Aphrodite of Knidos is his most well-known work and is the first example of a full-scale female figure portrayed in the nude. This work would go on to influence the way the female form was depicted in sculpture for centuries to come.

Italian sculptor Donatello was fundamental in pushing forward art and culture during the Italian Renaissance. Primarily working in Florence, much of his work can still be found in the city today. His bronze David statue is the mark of a significant change in art, as it was the first free-standing nude since antiquity and marks the beginning of Renaissance sculpture. The astonishing realism of his wood Penitent Magdalene shows just how far ahead of his time Donatello was.

While he's associated closely with fresco art due to his impressive Sistine Chapel ceiling, Michelangelo is really a sculptor at heart. He believed that every block of marble contained a work of art waiting to be released, and he just needed to chip away until it appeared. His iconic David statue remains an enduring symbol of the Italian Renaissance and continues to inspire generations of artists. A sculptor until his dying day, Michelangelo was dedicated to his craft, and he continued working right up until the week of his death at the age of 88.

Perhaps no other artist defines the Baroque era more than Gianlorenzo Bernini, whose impressive career spanned nearly 70 years. As a child prodigy, Bernini was creating large-scale marble sculptures as a teen. Later, he would become the architect of St. Peter's Basilica-following in Michelangelo's footsteps-where he created the Basilica's iconic plaza and colonnade, as well as its central bronze canopy. A master of materials, Bernini is known for his astonishing ability to create movement and bring forth emotion with his work. In his hands, marble transforms into soft flesh that looks so real, you want to reach out and squeeze it. One of his most famous sculptures, Pluto and Persephone is a wonderful example of his creative abilities.

Famous for his work in marble, Antonio Canova is perhaps to most well-known Neoclassical sculptor. True to the movement's form, he looked to classical antiquity for inspiration. As one of the most celebrated artists of the 1800s, his sculptures were commissioned by European royalty and the elite. Among his patrons was Napoleon, for whom he created a heroic statue showing the politician in the guise of Mars. Canova is known for his ability to transform marble and create incredible textures, such as soft drapery and dewy skin, with the stone.

French sculptor Auguste Rodin is generally thought to have brought sculpture into the modern age. Classically trained, he came to international attention after his works were displayed at the World's Fair. Rodin continues to be one of the most recognized artists in the world, with his pre-eminent work The Thinker visible in different castings around the globe. Rodin is known for his ability to forgo realism and decoration in favor of using texture, surface details, and light and shadow to convey emotion. His focus on inner emotion and suffering is a turning point in the history of art and serves as a hallmark of Modernism.

One of the most influential sculptors of the 20th century, Constantin Brancusi was a pioneer of Modernism. The Romanian artist was greatly influenced by folk traditions, though he also sought inspiration from cultures outside of Europe. His sculptures are known for their clean, geometric lines, as evidenced by his acclaimed Bird in Space series. Brancusi also created masterful outdoor sculptures. Endless Column is one of three works he created to commemorate Romanian heroes of World War I. The stacked shapes feature a half rhomboid at the top of the totem, which is meant to symbolize infinity.

Multi-faceted French artist Marcel Duchamp is associated with many avant-garde art movements. But it was after World War I, when he became involved with Dadaism, that he started dabbling with found objects. Calling them "Readymades," Duchamp used these pieces to challenge the world's ideas about what qualifies as art. His most well-known readymade, Fountain, is a sculpture created from a urinal signed with the name R. Mutt. While the artwork was shocking at the time, Fountain is now seen as part of a turning point in art history.

American sculptor Alexander Calder initially trained as a mechanical engineer, which perhaps explains his fascination with movement. Calder pioneered the use of wire sculptures and mobiles, a type of kinetic art that he initially powered with motors before exploring the effect of wind currents. In the 1930s, he began creating monumental outdoor sculptures, with most of his public commissions coming in the 1960s. These large abstract sculptures in steel were often commissioned by top architects, including I.M. Pei. A multi-faceted artist, Calder also created stage sets for theater productions, designed jewelry, and was a prolific painter and printmaker.

Swiss sculptor Alberto Giacometti is perhaps most recognized for his thin, elongated figures. Their rough texture allows viewers to see the force of the sculptor, who was also a painter and printmaker. For a six-year period, starting in 1938, Giacometti focused on small-scale sculptures, with each piece measuring no more than 2.75 inches in height. His most famous sculptures are his series, Walking Man. Three of these four life-size sculptures are cast in bronze. Giacometti's work is often considered when discussing existentialism and the human condition. Many scholars have suggested that his elongated figures relate to a lack of meaning in 20th-century life.

Known for his semi-abstract public sculptures, English artist Henry Moore was the preeminent post-World War II sculptor both in Britain and abroad. His work most often features reclining figures with a recurring theme of Mother and Child. Moore's figures are often dissected into multiple pieces, yet his clean lines allow viewers to effectively see the figure within the abstract form. Fans of his work will want to visit his 60-acre estate in Perry Green, Hertfordshire. Now owned by the Henry Moore Foundation, it's home to the largest collection of his work.

Recognized as a founder of both Minimalism and Conceptualism, Sol LeWitt rose to prominence in the late 1960s. The American artist preferred the term "structures" over sculptures. He was highly interested in modular structures that were often cubic in nature, with much of his work executed in stacked cinder blocks. Later in life, he began to incorporate curvilinear forms and saturated colors-a complete departure from his previous production. A multi-faceted artist, LeWitt is also recognized for his wall drawings, gouaches, and architectural projects.

Most well-known for her public art and installations, French-American sculptor Louise Bourgeois rose to international acclaim in 1982 after the Museum of Modern Art held her first retrospective. By this time, she was already in her 70s and had enjoyed a prolific career. Drawing from her own life experience, her sculptures often explore themes of family, sexuality, and death. In the 1990s, Bourgeois began using the spider as a symbol in her art. Maman was cast as an edition of six bronzes and stands over 30 feet high. The work is an ode to the sculptor's mother, who died when she was a child, and speaks to her strength and protection over her family.

Specializing in large-scale sculpture and conceptual art, sculptor Anish Kapoor is most well-known for his public artworks in Chicago, London, and New York City. Perhaps his most famous artwork is , also affectionately known as The Bean. Located in Chicago, it's made of 168 stainless steel plates that have been polished into a mirrored finish. While this monumental piece is indicative of Kapoor's public art, early in his career he was known for his geometric sculptures that used simple materials like granite, plaster, and limestone. He then transitioned into working with carved stone, creating sculptures with cavities that played on themes of duality.

Jeff Koons has often ruffled feathers with his sculptures dealing with pop culture and everyday objects. Some critics view his work as kitsch and crass, while others find them revolutionary. In the late 1970s, he started experimenting with what would become one of his most recognizable series, Inflatables. The original Inflatable, Rabbit, was cast from a readymade inflatable rabbit in polished stainless steel. In 2019, Koons' Rabbit became the most expensive piece ever sold by a living artist when it was sold at Christie's for $80 million.

The article has been edited and updated.

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15 Great Sculptors Who Changed the History of Art

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Rodin, Michelangelo, Donatello-these are the names of the innovative visionaries behind some of the greatest sculptures in art history. Sculptors like these gifted creatives have the unique opportunity to bring their subjects to life and manipulate materials to defy the expectations of spectators.

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WEEKEND 4 SEMESTER 2 CONSTANTIN BRANCUSI

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WEEKEND 4 SEMESTER 2 CONSTANTIN BRANCUSI

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These totem pole-like  Brancusi sculptures have visual links to Barbara Hepworth's outdoor work, also shown in this secondary research. Hepworth was influenced by Brancusi.

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WEEKEND 4 SEMESTER 2 CONSTANTIN BRANCUSI

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WEEKEND 4 SEMESTER 2 CONSTANTIN BRANCUSI

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I really like the repetitive shapes and geometric appearance of this work. Words below taken from theartstory.org

1918

Endless Column

Originally created in 1918, in Endless Column Brâncuși references the axis mundi, or axis of the world, a concept crucial to the beliefs of many traditional cultures embodying the connection between heaven and earth. This focus reflected Brâncuși's strong and persistent affinity for the sacred, cosmic, and mythical. Endless Column also treats another theme of Brâncuși's work, the idea of infinity, here suggested by the repetition of identical rhomboid shapes. This image shows the most famous of Brâncuși's Endless Columns, which was the version that served as the centerpiece of the tripartite sculptural memorial to fallen soldiers in World War I erected in Tirgu-Jiu, Romania in 1938.

Original Work: Oak - Museum of Modern Art, New York

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'Structure' 1973 - by our friend Mr. Sol Lewitt! I love this I think the simple block shape repeated  achieves really beautiful lines -  and shadows on the floor, wow! I think its a great example of how a modular work can be quite delicate in its formation.

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This link  was interesting because I found it after I had carved the baby block.  This is a set of instructions for a  class to carve toy blocks to make a modular sculpture. Which is exactly how I was thinking with the baby  block because it represent the earliest traces of language and maths in keeping with my thematic on traces and marks of self in landscape -  and I thought if you made them giant size it could make a brilliant piece of land art.

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Objectives

studio fundamentals: To understand and experiment with the elements and principles of "modularity, "repetition," and "rhythm" in the construction of three-dimensional form.

concepts: To explore how sculptural form is often a matter of how "the whole is greater than the sum of the parts." To explore the pluses and minuses of "modularity" and "manufacturing." To consider the needs of the user.

technical: To introduce methods for creating identical parts from unique prototypes using such devices as molds, templates, and jigs. To explore different materials and methods for attaching and/or connecting multiple parts.

Project Overview
Your challenge is to create a unique system of no less than 12 identical building blocks from which you will create a free-standing "modular" toy block sculpture.

Carl Andre, Le Corbusier, Wharton Esherick, Dan Flavin, Frederich Froebel, Buckminster Fuller, Sol Lewitt, Louise Nevelson, Isamu Noguchi, Lucy Orta, Moshe Safdie, Charles Simonds, Kenneth Snelson, Tony Smith, Tassimo and Lella Vignelli, Modular toys, lego brickbuilder

Vocabulary
module, modular, repetition, rhythm, gestalt, template, jig, piece mold, vacu-form, prototype, manufacture, free-standing,

Required materials: Materials for final sculpture depends on your design. Styrofoam blocks a possibility but degrade quickly. Wood holds up for kids and is safe but hard to replicate multiple elements. Metal hard to work but durable. Plastic forms using vacu-form allow for ease of replication. Ceramic or plaster heavy but easy to create multiples. For more organic feel, use materials such as cloth and sewing materials. Consider alternative methods of attachment--e.g., velcro, zippers, snaps. Final project cannot be glued together--the attachment system must be part of the design.

Process
Preliminary:

1. Before coming to class read the discussion Technology for Unit VI in the Concepts section of the 3D matrix. Review the Project References above.

2. Try out the Lego Brickbuilder link.
Activities/considerations:
a) In thinking about "building blocks", consider your own childhood...or that of others. What did you enjoy? What have you learned in observing kids at play?

b) Make some initial "thumbnail sketches" of what you feel would be good building blocks for kids. Identify some key features that a system of identical building blocks must share in order to construct fully 3D structures. What materials, colors, supplemental surface markings, weights, types of connectors, are appropriate? There is no particular age requirement, so think about who your ideal user may be.

c) Research existing modular building systems for kids on the web. These may include things like Lincoln logs, Legos, and a host of other products.

d) Include short descriptions of your own toys and several existing toy building systems in your notebook. What is the relationship of the design of the individual toy building blocks--the modules--and the structures one could build? Were certain designs more appropriate for certain ages of kids?

e) Use foam or plasticine clay or other easily workable material to explore some initial ideas for your design. Keep your designs simple...and try a lot of different variations. The complexity of the final sculpture will come more from the combination of the individual parts--less from the complexity of the individual module.

f) Part of the challenge of the project is to translate your initial ideas using a method for easily replicating the object in another material. For example, a wooden "prototype" may be used to manufacture a dozen "modules" using the vacu-form machine. Jigs--custom designed holding devices--could be used to easily saw identical shapes on the band saw. Plaster molds could be used to mass produce a dozen identical objects in clay, plastic, or other castable materials.

g) You will quickly discover that the flexibility of your module is only as good as its connectors. Will your system allow for building fully 3D objects...or will it only allow for links (like traincars on a track) or 2D structures (like flat puzzle pieces)? Your goal should be to develop a system that is fully 3D.

h) Using your initial research, your thumbnail sketches, and your finished sculpture as resources, write a page that discusses your ideas and the final project. Put this page into your notebook.

i) If feasible, document how kids (whatever the age!) interact with your building blocks. Include this in your notebook.

When you have completed your sculpture, pair up with another artist and trade critiques. Consider the following:

1. Describe the techniques used to create the sculptures and explain how various aspects of the problem were addressed such as material choice, the flexibility of the module, the method of creating multiples, etc.

2. How does this system compare with other similar building systems?

3. Discuss ideas the artwork seems to communicate. After some sharing of interpretations, attempt to describe the effect of the work in one sentence. (This artwork is about...)

Your notebook should include the following:

1. Evidence of your research (print-outs from magazines, web searches, interviews with kids, teachers, young parents, etc.).

2. Your design process (documentation of original object, method used to translate the prototype into multiples, drawings, computer-printouts, photos, etc).

3. Supplemental materials (receipts, notes about technique or materials)

4. Documentation of the final work and, if possible, kids using your building blocks.

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Objectives studio fundamentals: To understand and experiment with the elements and principles of "modularity, "repetition," and "rhythm" in the construction of three-dimensional form. concepts: To explore how sculptural form is often a matter of how "the whole is greater than the sum of the parts." To explore the pluses and minuses of "modularity" and "manufacturing."

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WEEKEND 4 SEMESTER 2 DAME BARBARA HEPWORTH

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WEEKEND 4 SEMESTER 2 DAME BARBARA HEPWORTH

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Link to Barbara Hepworth Retrospective in The Observer

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The art of Barbara Hepworth (1903-75) needs no introduction - or so you might think. Standing stones, carved totems, hollows, holes and polished eggs, white marble ovoids, their scooped-out interiors sometimes strung like musical instruments: these are so ubiquitous as to be almost a cliche of modernist sculpture.

Single Form, the gargantuan monolith with its circular sight-hole that stands outside the UN headquarters in New York, is probably the most televised sculpture in the world. Yet the curators at Tate Britain seem to believe that Hepworth is undersold, not least as an international figure. Odder still is the show they have organised - cramped, frustrating, weirdly selected and badly displayed, as if deliberately designed to diminish her.

The first gallery is a Penelope Curtis special. The outgoing director of Tate Britain and co-curator of this show is a passionate promoter of the lesser-known sculptors of British modernism. In the first gallery Penelope Curtis has taken the bold step of creating what amounts to a condensed museum of their work. This is an excellent opportunity to make the acquaintance of the graceful stone figures of Ursula Edgcumbe, for instance - lithe, incised, full of personality - but it doesn't do much to help the Hepworth cause.

For one thing her works are heavily alarmed or locked away in glass cases so that you can't touch them, as Hepworth strongly urged. For another, it demonstrates that she was by no means the only artist carving in onyx, ironstone and marble in the late 1920s - and by no means the best. She looks less like a pioneer than a disciple of almost everyone around her, from her first husband, John Skeaping, to her contemporary Henry Moore. This surely cannot have been the intention.

Like so many of her British peers, what is more, Hepworth's early modernism is always looking overseas. Her squat stone carvings recall the aesthetics of Picasso. , 1929-30, is a blockish nude with massive Picassoesque hands and a cello like a huge hunk of cheddar. Two Forms - a pair of smooth marble eggs positioned so that they appear to be in close communication - so resembles Brancusi's polished ovoids as to be, let us say, closely related.

And even later on, the strung sculptures have their forebears too. Sculpture with Colour (Oval Form) Pale Blue and Red, from 1943, has its hints of sea and sky in the fresh blue interior and an inner web of strings, radial as spokes, to some people suggestive of music. Hepworth's friend, the Russian constructivist Naum Gabo made stringed forms long before she did; which may be why she was at pains to explain that hers were personal evocations of "the tension I felt between myself and the sea, the wind or the hills".

Landscape and nature are an even bigger conundrum for the show's curators. It is not just that so many of Hepworth's sculptures were made to be displayed outdoors, especially the big metal slabs with their curious guano-streaked texture that you see in British parks, or the reclining quasi-human forms outside our public buildings, or even the enormous string-winged figure nailed to the side of John Lewis on Oxford Street, London that speaks so emphatically of the 60s.

It is that the more austere her work, the more sterile it looks in the subterranean galleries at Tate Britain. The groupings of pristine abstract forms - white cones, spheres and shapes like miniature dolmens - look especially stark and unnatural in the artificial lighting, as if they were making a purely theoretical point. This is not to say that they don't come as a dramatic surprise, after all the semi-figuration, but they feel like a phase in some art historical argument.

And that is the overwhelming flaw of the show itself: it insists on presenting arguments. The curators want to advance a symbiotic working relationship (hardly news) between Hepworth and her second husband, Ben Nicholson; in order to do so they have filled the third gallery with paintings, drawings and reliefs by Nicholson that overshadow Hepworth's sculptures to such a degree her work is effectively undermined.

Worse still, there is an intense focus on Hepworth's self-curating (as they almost call it, but don't quite) - the way she staged her works, the way she handled the media. This is both drily theoretical and at the same time exposing, suggesting an excessive degree of control. A 1953 film of Hepworth hacking away in the sunlit studio gardens at St Ives, hair coiled like Simone de Beauvoir, as Cecil Day-Lewis intones the exceedingly portentous voiceover about the sea, the elements, the trees that contain the forms, and so forth, is unmitigated hagiography.

There are more than 100 works in this show, yet somehow it still manages to stray away from the very odd character of her work. The evolution is perfectly conveyed, to be sure - the works getting bigger and more expensive in tandem with her flourishing career. But what is their essential nature? People are always saying that Hepworth's art is elegant, fluent, tactile and above all graceful; it seems to me very often the opposite.

The big bronzes are rough and unyielding, standing like walls against the sky. Light comes through their perforated discs like a relief (in both respects). The ovoid carvings invite all kinds of visual associations - corkscrews, apple peel, eggs, binoculars, harps, when stringed - that they just as readily reject. The open structures of the later years resemble rusting gyroscopes, the massive wood-carvings are like 40-ton conkers, gleaming to shoe-polish brightness. The satisfaction is almost there, but always Hepworth stops short of metaphor.

Anyone who prefers her super-fluent drawings will appreciate the celebrated hospital images displayed in this show - surgeons and nurses deep in their painstaking work - and not just because the images are sensationally beautiful. What they achieve is exactly what the sculptures so often deliberately avoid - an articulation of the strange tension between figuration and abstraction in the real world around us. People, objects and landscapes are woven together, the affinities eloquently articulated. They are expressive in the very degree to which the sculptures - so tough and hard won - are not.

* At Tate Britain, London until 25 October
Topics

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Barbara Hepworth: Sculpture for the Modern World review - designed to diminish

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The art of Barbara Hepworth (1903-75) needs no introduction - or so you might think. Standing stones, carved totems, hollows, holes and polished eggs, white marble ovoids, their scooped-out interiors sometimes strung like musical instruments: these are so ubiquitous as to be almost a cliche of modernist sculpture.

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WEEKEND 4 SEMESTER 2 DAME BARBARA HEPWORTH 

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WEEKEND 4 SEMESTER 2 DAME BARBARA HEPWORTH 

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I really love this Hepworth carved sculpture for it's abstract shapes and precision placement -  it reminds me of a totem pole.

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WEEKEND 4 SEMESTER 2 DAME BARBARA HEPWORTH CONE AND SPHERE

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WEEKEND 4 SEMESTER 2 DAME BARBARA HEPWORTH CONE AND SPHERE

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WEEKEND 4 SEMESTER 2 DAME BARBARA HEPWORTH

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WEEKEND 4 SEMESTER 2 DAME BARBARA HEPWORTH

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I had decided to carve the symmetrical shapes of a pestle and a baby block. So I looked to Dame Barbara Hepworth for her carvings in the sculpture 'Three Forms' and 'Cone and Sphere. I wanted to craft a symmetrical object because its harder to do than an abstract carving  - because you can see every mistake. I think in these sculptures Hepworth shows her skills as a craftswoman.

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Serravezza marble on marble base 200 x 533 x 343 (7 7/8 x 21 x 13 1/2)

Presented by Mr and Mrs J.R. Marcus Brumwell 1964

Provenance:
Purchased from the artist by Mr and Mrs J.R. Marcus Brumwell 1935

Exhibited:
14th 7 & 5 Society, Zwemmer Gallery, London, Oct. 1935 (no cat.)
Abstract & Concrete: An Exhibition of Abstract Painting and Sculpture, 1934 & 1935, 41 St Giles, Oxford, Feb. 1936 (13)
British Art and the Modern Movement 1930-40, Welsh Committee of the Arts Council, National Museum of Wales, Cardiff, Oct.-Nov. 1962 (28)
Art in Britain 1930-40 Centred around Axis, Circle, Unit One, Marlborough Fine Art, London, March-April 1965 (40, repr. p.31)
Barbara Hepworth, Tate Gallery, London, April-May 1968 (26)
Henry Moore to Gilbert and George: Modern British Art from the Tate Gallery, Palais des Beaux Arts, Brussels, Sept.-Nov. 1973, as part of Europalia 73 Great Britain (46, repr. p.61)
Art in One Year:1935, Tate Gallery display, London, Dec. 1977 - Feb. 1978 (no number)
Thirties: British Art and Design Before the War, Hayward Gallery, London, Oct. 1979-Jan. 1980 (6.61, repr. p.170)
British Sculpture in the Twentieth Century, Part 1: Image and Form 1901-50, Whitechapel Art Gallery, London, Sept.-Nov. 1981 (166)
Barbara Hepworth: A Retrospective, Tate Gallery Liverpool, Sept.-Dec. 1994, Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, Feb.-April 1995, Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, May-Aug. (20, repr. in col. p.63)
Un Siécle de Sculpture Anglaise, exh. cat., Galerie national du Jeu de Paume, Paris June-Sept. 1996 (no number, repr. in col. p.97)
Carving Mountains: Modern Stone Sculpture in England 1907-37, Kettle's Yard, Cambridge, March- April 1998, De La Warr Pavilion, Bexhill-on-Sea, May-June (27, repr. p.29)

Literature:
William Gibson, Barbara Hepworth: Sculptress, London 1946, p.7, pl.26
J.P. Hodin, Barbara Hepworth, Neuchâtel and London 1961, pp.19, 163 no.72, repr.
Tate Gallery Report 1964-5, London 1966, p.39
'Recent Museum Acquisitions: Sculpture and Drawings by Barbara Hepworth (The Tate Gallery)', Burlington Magazine, vol.108, no.761, Aug. 1966, p.425, repr. p.424, pl.56
Ronald Alley, Barbara Hepworth, exh. cat., Tate Gallery, London 1968, p.13
Richard Morphet, Art in One Year:1935, display broadsheet, Tate Gallery, London 1977, [pp.3,4,5] repr. [p.5])
Dennis Farr, English Art 1870-1940, Oxford 1978, pp.290-1, pl.108a
Simon Wilson, British Art: From Holbein to the Present Day, London 1979, p.144, repr.
Charles Harrison, English Art and Modernism 1900-1939, London and Bloomington, Indiana 1981, p.269, rev. ed. London and New Haven 1994
David Fraser Jenkins, Barbara Hepworth: A Guide to the Tate Gallery Collection at London and St Ives, Cornwall, London 1982, p.10, repr. in col. p.25
Penelope Curtis, Modern British Sculpture from the Collection, Tate Gallery Liverpool 1988, p.51, repr.
Sally Festing, Barbara Hepworth: A Life of Forms, London 1995, pp.121,292
Penny Florence, 'Barbara Hepworth: the Odd Man Out Preliminary Thoughts about a Public Artist' in David Thistlewood (ed.), Barbara Hepworth Reconsidered, Liverpool 1996, p.28
Anne J. Barlow, 'Barbara Hepworth and Science' in Thistlewood 1996, p.100-1, repr.
Un Siécle de Sculpture Anglaise, exh. cat., Galerie national du Jeu de Paume, Paris 1996, p.458
Alan Wilkinson, Barbara Hepworth: Sculptures from the Estate, exh. cat., Wildenstein, New York 1996, p.21, repr.

Reproduced:
Herbert Read, Barbara Hepworth: Carvings and Drawings, London 1952, pl.37b
Jeremy Lewison, 'Aspects de l'art anglais dans les années trente', Années 30 en Europe: Le Temps menaçant 1929-1939, exh. cat. Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris 1997, p.82

Tripartite groups appeared in Barbara Hepworth's works with the advent of geometrical abstraction in 1935. Three Forms, 1935 is the largest and best known of these, and probably preceded by two others of the same moment, Two Forms and Sphere (BH 63, private collection, repr. Hodin 1961, pl.63) and Three Forms (Carving in Grey ) (Tate Gallery ). Both of the others have been placed in 1934 (Hodin 1961), but the 's review of her work in December of that year makes this unlikely: 'It is 5 months or more since I did any' (postmarked 21 Dec. 1934, TGA 8717.1.1.197). Three Forms (Carving in Grey Alabaster) featured in Henri Frankfort's article in July 1935 ('New Works by Barbara Hepworth', Axis, no.3, July 1935, p.16), where the absence of Three Forms, 1935 may suggest that it was not yet finished.

In retrospect, Hepworth placed the tripartite works immediately after the watershed in her sculpture caused by the birth of her triplets on 3 October 1934. In 1952, she recalled that her works had become 'more formal and all traces of naturalism had disappeared, and for some years I was absorbed in the relationships in space, in size and texture and weight, as well as in the tensions between the forms'. Perceiving the continuity with her subsequent work, she added an anthropomorphic reading: 'This formality initiated the exploration with which I have been preoccupied continuously since then, and in which I hope to discover some absolute essence in sculptural terms giving the quality of human relationships' (Read 1952, section 3). This was further qualified by the statement that 'the only fresh influence had been the arrival of the children' (ibid.). Ten years earlier, she had told E.H. Ramsden that Two Forms and Sphere was the first work made after their birth (letter to E.H. Ramsden, 4 April 1943, TGA 9310); this seems to have been implied for each of the tripartite works, including Three Forms, 1935 ( Tate Gallery Report 1964-5, 1966, p.39).

All three of these works display the concern with 'relationships in space, in size and texture and weight'. The rectangular bases define the relations between the three elements. The location of these was necessarily triangular, as Hepworth avoided a purely linear option, and the variations in size laid open potentially complex interrelations. In each case, a pair of forms - which in both Tate works included the largest - was ranged to the left and balanced by pushing the third far out (as if on a fulcrum) and activating the intervening space. The relative equality between the elements in Three Forms, 1935, means that this space is less exaggerated than in the related works, but, even so, the sphere is distinctly isolated.

The irregularity of the elements in each of these tripartite works was highlighted by the inclusion of a sphere. It acts as a compositional measure, matched against angular forms in , 1935. It also sets up the Two Forms and Sphere and against ovals in Three Forms (Carving in Grey Alabaster) and Three Forms Three Forms, 1935 is 120 mm (4 3/4 in.). This is the same as the depth of both the medium size element (85 x 180 x 120 mm; 3 3/8 x 7 1/8 x 4 3/4 in.) and the larger oval (180 x 255 x 120 mm; 7 1/16 x 10 x 4 3/4 in.); so that each is equivalent in this single dimension (in depth), variety being achieved in the other dimensions. Even there, the height of the large oval is equivalent to the length of the central element. Although the base has been replaced, the present spacing follows the original and is similarly regulated. This may be seen from the location of the largest element which is as far from the front of the base as the sphere is from the back (208 mm; 8 3/16 in.) - ensuring the open space on the right - and its distance from the right edge is equivalent to the length of the middle element (180 mm; 7 1/8 in.). This precision must be seen in the light of a significant adjustment - presumably made by Hepworth herself - to the position of the largest element: holes in the original base indicate that it was relocated about 10 mm (3/8 in.) further back. This alteration must have been of critical importance as it required drilling very close to the original holes and risked leaving the plugged holes visible. Shallow divots were taken out of the marble around the new holes in order to bed the element into the base; the same method has been used to locate the other two solids. Such 'spatial disposition' encouraged Frankfort to stress the role of the base in this group of works as 'by no means an accessory, but, on the contrary an essential part of the carving' ('New Works by Barbara Hepworth', proportional relationship with its more irregular fellows. The diameter of the sphere in Axis, no.3, July 1935, p.16).

The elements in , 1935 evokes a sense of , no.3, July 1935, p.16). Such comparisons reveal a fundamental departure from the Three Forms, 1935 are larger in relation to the base than in the associated works, and the rectangle is broader. The result is calmer than the frontal arrangement across the shallow stone of Three Forms (Carving in Grey Alabaster) and more stable in the round. It is enhanced by the carving of all parts from the same white Serravezza marble, the luminosity of which lends a sense of permanence and classical form. It recalls Adrian Stokes's perception of the radiance of Hepworth's 'unstressed rounded shapes', and his definition that 'all successful sculpture in whatever material has borrowed a vital steadiness, a solid and vital repose' ('Art: Miss Hepworth's Carving', Spectator, 3 Nov.1933, p.621; reprinted in Lawrence Gowing, ed., The Critical Writings of Adrian Stokes, vol.1, 1930-37, 1978, p.309). The contemporary critical term 'vital' - even if usually gendered as Katy Deepwell has observed ('Hepworth and her Critics' in Thistlewood 1996, p.82) - signalled the ambition and achievement in Hepworth's work. In all these qualities, especially in the luminosity of the marble and the use of proportions, Three Forms Axis
classicism modified by modern vitality. It is in this respect that Frankfort could compare Hepworth's work to the Apollo of Olympia ('New Works by Barbara Hepworth', primitivising references of the 1920s.

The degree of abstraction represented by , 1935 is closely comparable to that in Ben Nicholson's white . Although the structure remained essentially pictorial, his adoption - under the influence of Hepworth's carving - of shallow relief at the end of 1933 went some way to meet her increasing definition of her work by the of the base. Their converging concerns were a function of their shared interests, contacts and work spaces in the Mall Studios. During 1933-4, Nicholson had the advantage of regular periods in Paris (seeing his first family) where he was in contact with the artists of Three Forms Abstraction Creation alignment, of which the couple were members. Hepworth's pregnancy and the birth of the triplets severely limited the time she could dedicate to carving in 1934, although she later claimed that their arrival 'gave us an even greater unity of idea and aim' (Read 1952, section 3). Nevertheless, Three Forms, 1935 parallels such reliefs by Nicholson as the large mahogany 1935 (white relief) (Tate Gallery ). There, the balancing of a compass-drawn and a hand-drawn circle exactly echoes Hepworth's combination of the sphere and the oval solids.

Among the members of Abstraction Creation, Hepworth's contributions of carvings contrasted with the enclosure of space by plane and line which typified the international ) with its concentration upon illusionistic cylinders (Morphet 1977, [p.3]). Rather than the constructivism of Naum Gabo, Antoine Pevsner, Alexander Calder and Katarzyna Kobro. In this respect, Hepworth maintained a latent relation to the techniques of Brancusi and (to a lesser extent) Arp, as well as to the direct carving ideals of the 1920s. The shift to abstraction expressed in her work, and that of Henry Moore, raised the question of reconciling a craft heritage with new forms. A.M. Hammacher has alighted upon this disparity exposed around 1936-7, commenting that while 'space became a point of departure' for Gabo's constructions and their carvings, 'neither Moore nor Hepworth found themselves able to relinquish their relationship with wood and stone, a relationship which had proved so fruitful' (A.M. Hammacher, Barbara Hepworth, 1968, rev. ed. 1987, p.74). The solution, exemplified by Three Forms, 1935 and by Moore's more organic Three-piece Carving, 1934 (destroyed, repr. David Sylvester, Henry Moore Complete Sculpture: Volume 1 Sculpture 1921-48, pp.38-9, LH 149), was the juxtaposition of abstract forms on a definite field. This seemed to owe something to Paul Nash's paintings of juxtaposed solids, and Three Forms, 1935 has been compared to Nash's Equivalents for the Megaliths, 1935 (Tate Gallery Three Forms, 1935 and related works such as Two Forms and Sphere, Surrealistic disjuncture taken up by Nash and Moore, Hepworth sought the contemporary 'equivalent' for pre-historic carving in geometrical solids, relying on the sphere in Two Segments and Sphere, 1935-6 (BH 79, private collection, repr. Hodin 1961, pl.79) and Conoid, Sphere and Hollow II, 1937 (BH 100, Government Art Collection, repr. Read 1952, pl.53). As well as the defiant balance, the attraction of the sphere lay in the same purity of form found in the circles of Nicholson's reliefs.

The works of Hepworth and Nicholson during this period are also united by the predominance of white, which achieved an ideological significance amongst modernists. It was a sign of the 'perfection, purity and certitude' of the era according to the Dutch constructivist Theo van Doesburg in Vers la Peinture Blanche (Art Concret, April 1930, translated in Joost Baljeu, Theo van Doesburg, New York, 1974, p.183), a pamphlet which Nicholson may have been given by Hélion in late 1933 (Jeremy Lewison, Ben Nicholson, exh. cat., Tate Gallery 1994, p.44). In particular, the preference for white was associated with the clarity and proportional harmony of contemporary architecture, and especially that of Le Corbusier. In 1933, Jim Ede recommended that Hepworth and Nicholson visit 'La Roche in a Corbusier house in Paris' (letter to Nicholson postmarked 30 Mar 1933, TGA 8717.1.2.883) on their Easter holiday, presumably as much for the as the building. At the same time, the architect Wells Coates - whom Hepworth and Nicholson knew through Unit One - was completing the modernist Isokon Flats in Lawn Road (1932-4) of which one was occupied by Adrian Stokes. In 1934, the presence of such modernist architecture in London was further reinforced by the arrival of Walter Gropius from the ; Hepworth reported that Ben Nicholson's architect brother Christopher met him later that year (letter to Nicholson undated [Dec. 1934], TGA 8717.1.1.203).

However, in writing of the association of architecture with the use of white in Nicholson's reliefs, Charles Harrison has argued that 'the whiteness of the white reliefs should be perhaps taken as the distillation of a particular set of interests in the apperceptive world of painting, rather than as a reflection of an aspect of the history of design' ( English Art and 1900-1939, 1981, p.264). Hepworth certainly shared the 'pursuit of an extreme clarity' which Harrison associates with Nicholson's memories of visiting 'the white-painted studios of Arp or Brancusi in 1932-3' (ibid.). For her part, Hepworth added a potent memory of Mondrian's studio which 'made me gasp with surprise at its beauty ... everything gleamed with whiteness' (Read 1952, section 3). She had also shared the important visits to the studios of Brancusi and Arp. A 'miraculous feeling of eternity' struck her in Brancusi's studio, where 'humanism ... seemed intrinsic in all the forms' (Read 1952, section 2). The immediate impact seems to have been exercised in Hepworth's organic abstractions of 1933-4 which drew upon Arp's work, but by 1935 she was responding to Brancusi's referential ovoid and oval forms by converting them into the more impassive abstraction of such works as Three Forms, 1935. Like Brancusi, Hepworth allowed herself greater variety in her choice of coloured materials than did Nicholson in his reliefs.

Three Forms, 1935 was conceived while Hepworth was a member of Abstraction Creation and came to represent an achievement of 'constructive' art. She was amongst those responsible for introducing it to Britain with the exhibitions of the in 1935 and Abstract and Concrete Art (1936) organised by Nicolete Gray; Three Forms, 1935 featured in both. The validity of constructive art raised considerable debate, and encouraged the editors of the 'survey' publication, Circle (Gabo, Nicholson and the architect Leslie Martin), to solicit contributions from progressive scientists. The physicist Desmond Bernal was one of these and, in the same year, he wrote the foreword to Hepworth's exhibition (Lefevre Gallery, 1937), in which he drew attention to the 'surfaces of slightly varying positive curvature' and the exactitude of the 'placing and orientation' of forms. In an undated letter, perhaps in relation to these observations, Hepworth wrote to Bernal of the intuitive experience of the artist and defended constructive art as 'the one way of freeing every conceivable idea to its fullest intensity' (undated [1937-9], Bernal Archive, University of Cambridge, Add:8287/384). More specifically she added, with accompanying sketches of Three Forms, 1935: 'When you criticised my carving & said this was wrong [arrow to sphere] & should have been this [arrow to dotted-in cylinder] you were quite right, sculpturally, spatially & constructively'. Given her differentiation of the roles of artist and scientist, such an unequivocal acceptance of Bernal's sculptural judgement seems astonishing, but it may reflect a dissatisfaction with an earlier work (despite the proportional relationships it used) by comparison with the standards of her present work. So much is implied by her concluding remarks about the work:

if I solve the spatial , ten to one I make a good carving, because I perfect the lines, form & tension & it lives. I might improve the one [form] you criticised, but my state of mind at the time I did it was not sufficiently clear, consequently the other 2 shapes have not the perfection that was required to solve the third shape.
It is interesting that the subject of this debate is the most superficially 'scientific' form - the sphere - which presumably lacked the surface variety that Bernal perceived in the sculptor's more recent elements. For her part, Hepworth accepted the application of 'laws' associated with constructive art, that a scientist could define and she could only grasp intuitively when her state of mind was - in language toned by her Christian Science beliefs - 'sufficiently clear'.

At the time of this debate, Three Forms, 1935 must already have been in the collection of Marcus and Irene Brumwell, friends and collectors of both Hepworth and Nicholson. Thirty years later, having donated the work to the Tate, Marcus Brumwell agreed that it was bought soon after being exhibited at the end of 1935, estimating: 'Shall we say 1 December 1935' (note to the Tate, March 1965, Tate Gallery Files). During that period it remained in remarkably good condition, limited to surface dirt.

However, on return from exhibition in Brussels in January 1974, the base was found to have been broken as the result of a 'sharp blow sustained unevenly' (Tate Gallery Conservation Files). The crack, which had chipped in the aperture, ran through one of the dowel holes for the medium size element and under the larger element. The impossibility of achieving a strong but invisible repair prompted the replacement of the original base with a new marble; this is slightly colder in colour. The dowels holding each form (three for the largest) were replaced with stainless steel as they had left rust marks, and the surface was cleaned and waxed (Tate Gallery Conservation Files).

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'Three Forms', Dame Barbara Hepworth, 1935 | Tate

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Artwork page for 'Three Forms', Dame Barbara Hepworth, 1935 on display at Tate St Ives. In 1934 Barbara Hepworth's abstraction based on the human figure gave way to an art of pure form. With such works as Three Forms she reduced her sculpture to the most simple shapes and eradicated almost all colour.

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WEEKEND 4 SEMESTER 2 NANCY HOLT SUN TUNNELS

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WEEKEND 4 SEMESTER 2 NANCY HOLT SUN TUNNELS

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Mick had spoken about the objects for the moulds being modular. I had previously  researched works from early Land Artists , who used modular shapes that could be reproduced exactly. I've included Nancy Holt's famous work here as a prime example of this.

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Nancy Holt was born in Worcester, Massachusetts, in 1938, and raised in New Jersey. She is internationally recognized for Sun Tunnels (1973-76), a pioneering work of Land art located in Utah's Great Basin Desert. Holt's five-decade-long practice included work in art, architecture, and time-based media that involved singular mediations on the environment.

After graduating with a degree in biology in 1960 from Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts, Holt moved to New York. During these formative years, she traveled extensively to various locations in the United States and abroad and began composing concrete poetry and photographic work that aligned her interest in the nuances of observation and the particularities of site. By the early 1970s, her work became increasingly concerned with the complexities of perception, specifically the effects of light and focus on spatial and temporal conceptions. In 1971 she initiated her multiyear series Locators, consisting of various steel sculptures of vertical rods that support a telescope-like pipe through which a viewer could look. A few years later, she developed the room-sized installations Holes of Light (1973) and Mirrors of Light (1974). Each explores the physical properties of light projected onto cylindrical forms. Holt's work with artificial light led her to work with natural light in the landscape and, ultimately, create Sun Tunnels.

Holt first visited the American West in 1968. Her engagement with the Western landscape manifested in the photographic series Western Graveyards (1968) and continued with the film Mono Lake (1968/2004), a collaboration with Michael Heizer and Robert Smithson. Holt's interest in the West as both concept and terrain is evident in her first site-specific environmental work, Missoula Ranch Locators: Vision Encompassed (1972), which placed a series of Locator sculptures within a large field in Montana. In 1973 Holt began working on Sun Tunnels. A year later, she purchased 40 acres in the Great Basin Desert on which she built the work. Sun Tunnels was completed in 1976.

As Holt articulated in 1977: "The idea for Sun Tunnels became clear to me while I was in the desert watching the sun rising and setting, keeping the time of the earth. Sun Tunnels can exist only in that particular place-the work evolved out of its site." Composed of four concrete cylinders that are 18 feet in length and 9 feet in diameter, Sun Tunnels is arranged in an open cross format and aligned to frame the sun on the horizon during the summer and winter solstices. Each tunnel is perforated by a series of holes corresponding to stars in various constellations-Capricorn, Columba, Draco, and Perseus-so that shadows cast by the sun through these small apertures into each tube trace the earth's rotation. The work centers Holt's interest in perception and involves a focus on time-sculpting the sun's light through the interplay of land and sky, and celestial shifts from day to night.

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Nancy Holt was born in Worcester, Massachusetts, in 1938, and raised in New Jersey. She is internationally recognized for Sun Tunnels (1973-76), a pioneering work of Land art located in Utah's Great Basin Desert. Holt's five-decade-long practice included work in art, architecture, and time-based media that involved singular mediations on the environment.

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WEEKEND 4 SEMESTER 2 MICK OHARA SCULPTURE WORKSHOP

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WEEKEND 4 SEMESTER 2 MICK OHARA SCULPTURE WORKSHOP

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Mick O'Hara's Sculpture workshop took place this weekend. However, it was the first weekend of Covid-19 restrictions. All lectures were transferred online.  It was quite some feat to be able to access a live sculpture workshop at home! Photos in primary research!

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WEEKEND 3 SEMESTER 2 Anselm Kiefer Girasolles

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WEEKEND 3 SEMESTER 2 Anselm Kiefer Girasolles

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We saw this work in the Guggenheim

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WEEKEND 3 SEMESTER 2 ANSELM KIEFER DOCUMENTARY

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WEEKEND 3 SEMESTER 2 ANSELM KIEFER DOCUMENTARY

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I also watched a documentary in 5 parts called Remembering the Future, where Kiefer talks about his practice across all mediums. It's possible to see the large scale of how he works, with the size of his studio and exhibition spaces. Fortunate to be rich enough to employ a team of people and lots of heavy duty machinery to put his sculpture works in place!!

First part of documentary on link below:

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1/5 Anselm Kiefer: Remembering the Future

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A short youtube clip with the artist speaking about his work

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WEEKEND 3 SEMESTER 2 Anselm Kiefer Guardian Article

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WEEKEND 3 SEMESTER 2 Anselm Kiefer Guardian Article

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How do you like your contemporary art? A quick hit of juicy mischief, a larky take on mortality, binful of bluebottles, pocketful of glitter, everything you never wanted to know and more about the artist's entrails? Right then, give Anselm Kiefer a very wide berth - because, as the show about to open at White Cube, London, will confirm, he doesn't do droll, he does the big embarrassing stuff, the stuff that matters: the epic slaughters of the world, the incineration of the planet, apocalypse then, apocalypse often; the fragile endurance of the sacred amid the cauterised ruins of the earth.

But lately, the undertaker of history has turned gardener. From deep beneath the loam of memory heaped over the canvas, Kiefer's vast, rutted wastelands have germinated brilliant resurrections: pastel blooms, spikes of verdure sprouting irrepressibly through the skin of a hard-baked earth-rind; or peachy-pink poppies trembling atop spindly black stalks that climb gawkily from bituminous slag. So, notwithstanding the massacre du jour served up with the cornflakes in our daily newsprint, for Kiefer in his current redemptive temper, hope really does spring eternal.

He must be the most un-hip artist ever shown by White Cube, the very Sanhedrin of cool; barely a contemporary painter-sculptor at all, if the range framing the contemporary goes from coyly self-effacing minimalism to gaudy showboating. What's more, Kiefer does earthspace, not cyberspace. No Luddite, he none the less has let it be known that what he dislikes most about computers is the indiscriminate quality of their memory, a universe of data held simultaneously, accessible at the click of a mouse, permanently available and impervious to either natural attrition or poetic distortion. Since nothing may be digitally forgotten, nothing may be truly recalled.

Much of Kiefer's art represents a resistance to this inhuman virtualisation of memory; its lazy democracy of significance, its translation into weightless impressions. The opposing pole from that alt/delete disposability is to make history obstinately material, laid down in dense, sedimentary deposits that demand patient, rugged excavation. Kiefer's work burrows away at time, and what it exposes also makes visible the painful toil of the dig, skinned knuckles, barked shins and all.

For a German born amid the slaughterhouses of 1945, booting up could never be glibly electronic. Kiefer became famous in the 1970s and 80s for his frontal engagements with the totems of German history: blood- spattered trails befouling the deep Teutonic woods (his name means fir tree) from which the national culture had been proverbially rough-hewn; torch-lit timbered pantheons within which heroes and anti-heroes lay provisionally interred.

By the lights of the transatlantic avant garde, Kiefer did absolutely everything wrong. The choices were clear. Art either had to be hard-edged in its irreducibly angular minimalism, like Donald Judd's stacked boxes, which drew their ominous power from being nothing other than what they were; or else it had to be ecstatically collapsed into the raw and rowdy universe of signs: op'n'pop, flags and soup tins, one long cackle at art's valetudinarian pretence to hold the moral high ground. To grab our attention amid the modern clamour, art needed to drop the churchiness (especially abstract churchiness), and get out from under all those centuries of pompous sententiousness and obscure story- telling. All painting could be was flat-out play (with the emphasis on flat).

Wrestling with his Teutonic demons - and keeping close company with the likes of Grünewald, Altdorfer and Caspar David Friedrich - Kiefer could scarcely comprehend, much less identify with, the case for painterly amnesia, nor with the posturing for lightness and shallowness (he has never been much of a tease). Stubbornly, his art was always hewed to spatial depth and moral weight, so his landscapes take anti-flatness about as far as it can possibly go, opening immense vistas behind the picture, carved furrows on the surface stretching away to remote distance.

He does not do this innocently, of course. The practice of perspective, invented to imagine a bucolic world where pastoral fancies were enacted in a neverland of happy radiance, is recycled in Kiefer's landscapes to exterminate the fantasy. Kiefer's skies are often black, streaked with the phosphoric licks of a descending firestorm, and what vanishes at the vanishing point are the balmy consolations of rusticity. Bye-bye Hay Wain, hello the Somme.

Kiefer also needs immensity in order to frame the ancestral epics of life and death which for him remain art's proper quarry, and which sometimes extend beyond that far horizon into the infinite metaphysical space of the beckoning cosmos, where they interrupt the emptiness with mapped constellations. Events - scriptural, mythic, poetic, historic - are transfigured into written words on the painting, because, for Kiefer, words sanctify the events and figures to which they refer, rather than demystify them.

His seriousness about words, as weighty as the lead from which he forges his books, also puts him at odds with the ironic mode of quotation that has long defined modern art. Instead of mimicking the industrially reproduced comic signage of the mass market, Kiefer marks his pictures with the spidery inscriptions of his own hand, the moving finger quoting, inter alia: Isaiah, Paul Celan, Aeschylus. Mirabile dictu. Wordiness for Kiefer is painterliness. The library and the gallery, the book and the frame inseparable, even interchangeable, in his monumental archive of human memory. Not since Picasso's Guernica have pictures demanded so urgently that we studiously reflect and recollect in their presence.

Which may make Kiefer's new work sound like homework (to be severely marked by the forbidding Herr Professor Uber-Bombast). Nah, thanks all the same, you're thinking, would rather do a day with Damien and Trace. But advance preparation in the Iliad, the Kabbalah, not to mention higher scriptural exegesis, is really not the price of admission. For visual drama that (I guarantee) will haunt your dreams, there's no one alive to beat Anselm Kiefer. This is because, along with being a philosopher-poet, he also happens to be a craftsman of phenomenal power and versatility.

For some time, he has been experimenting with work that crosses the boundaries separating not just art and literature but painting and sculpture. Sometimes (as in the breathtaking Merkaba), a gesamtkunstwerk (total artwork) brings together free-standing sculptural elements in stone or lead in continuum with a vertical painted surface, the one acting as a terrestrial transport to the celestial apparition of the other. Some of the paintings on display at White Cube sustain this working method by setting a clump of thorn bushes before an ashy grey winterscape that speaks (much less ponderously than this makes it sound) of chill death and resurrection. But other paintings - especially in the triptych of confounding masterpieces that, alas, will be travelling to the Gallery of New South Wales in Sydney - have incorporated into the grittily loaded texture of the canvas itself a seething bed of organic (and occasionally inorganic) matter, so that the surface becomes akin to a yeasty humus; alive with golden flecks of straw and hay, twigs, whole branches which poke through the impasto. Another denial of the modernist dogma that authentic paint should never dare to present as anything other than itself.

Kiefer's paint is forthrightly the crusty medium of generation - the baked clay that develops the cracks and fissures from which vegetable life burgeons forth. Even when the paint is, in fact, just that, it is made to clot and coagulate, puddle and pond, or rise in frozen crests as if it were the volcanic material of primordial genesis.

Kiefer's painting, then, is not a representation of some feature of creation so much as a re-enactment of it. And if this sounds a mite up itself, well indeed it is, and none the worse for it. Even if you care not a toss for the esoterica, the richness of classical allusion (such as the catastrophic landscape of the fall of Troy, scarred with explosions of carbon and cobalt, and transmitted via a telephonic connection from Greek peak to peak in mimicry of Agamemnon's beacon signals to faithless Clytemnestra), you can still happily envelop yourself in the blanket of colour and line that fill every centimetre of Kiefer's pictures.

Dazzling, nostalgically psychedelic shots of colour. Beneath the verse from Isaiah that speaks of heavenly mercy, "Rorate coeli desuper et nubes pluant" (Drop down ye dew and let the clouds rain upon the just), Kiefer has planted a field of blazing, flamingo-tinted poppies. But the mercy is not unqualified; the flowers are marshalled along perspectival lines all the way to a horizon that is built from raised skeins of greenish-black paint, the corrupted hues of chemical pollution. (Evidently we're not in Monet's picnic country of Les Coquelicots.) Kiefer's poppies with their black faces can be read interchangeably as columns of warriors or the floral memorials of their fiery entombment. And the petals of the middle distance suggest the flares of combat as much as a field of flowers.

The most startlingly florid of the pictures travels from a paradise garden at its base, with the caked terracotta blossoming in arabesques of brilliant violet, pink and vermilion splashes that coil through the more furrowed landscape. Above it are more verses from Isaiah that open the Palm Sunday liturgy: "Aperiat terra et germinat Salvatorem" (Let the earth open and bring forth a Saviour). But Kiefer being Kiefer, there needs be trouble in paradise, so that along the serpentine line of beauty lurks the form of a skeletal snake, its vertebra constructed from a string of terracotta beads suspended on spinal wire poking from the picture surface. Good and evil, vitality and mortality, thus literally hang sinuously in the balance, it being deliberately unclear whether the serpent is safely fossilised within the sprouting clay, or has shed its casing the better to writhe into freshly devilish incarnation.

This dialogue between martyrdom and resurrection continues into the deeply stirring Palm Sunday installation: 18 glazed cabinets that house vertically mounted branches of vegetation (mangroves, sunflower pods and dracenae as well as palms themselves). Stacked atop each other, the cabinets seem not so much vitrines from some botanical museum as the opened pages of a herbiary, Kiefer the tree-man knowingly playing with the conceit of a super-folio, interleaved with sacred revelations. The branches are coated with a thin skin of plaster or white paint so that, at first sight, they seem bleached of life, sapless and forlornly skeletal. But the newly (if tentatively) optimistic Kiefer wants us to register Palm Sunday as a true triumph; the entry to Jerusalem inaugurating the events that lead not just to the Passion but to the Resurrection. Kiefer also knows that, in both pagan and early Christian iconography, the palm with its sword-like branches was known as an immortal tree, which never actually perished but constantly regenerated, a new sheath of fronds budding from the site of a fallen limb. The very earliest representations of the cross in the Coptic church thus took the form of the living palm. Kiefer has also contrived to display another palm as if it were the feathers of some avian or even angelic wing; a doubly miraculous apparition which, as outsize quill, writes its own revelatory gospel behind the veiling glass.

Like the dirty fields of death sewn with floral brilliance, Kiefer's phantom tree limbs enact a parable of the intertwined fate of nature and humanity. For the erect branches lie or stand against flesh-coloured beds of sand, that in their gracefully voluptuous swirls are unmistakeably feminine and invitingly sexual. In one of the most beautiful of the cases, Hosianna, the vegetable matter is arranged as a luxuriant pubic tangle; the prima mater from which life itself issues. Kiefer has managed somehow (perhaps by treating the case as a kind of bath) to run streams of graphite across the sand and then wash them out to form delicate rills that suggest the ferns and lichens of the first green life to appear on the living planet. Gustave Courbet's lavishly devotional hymn to the pudenda, The Origin of the World, is by contrast all frisky slickness. Instead of the erotic quiver, Kiefer gives us a heart-stopping moment, as we suddenly read those marks as simultaneously biological and cosmological, micro and macro; a vision of deltaic capillaries, the pulsing veins and branches of an estuary as seen from an orbiting camera, or up close, the fronds waving gently through a transparent wash of nourishing water.

This is as good, I think, as art ever gets: mystery and matter delivered in a rush of poetic illumination. That Kiefer's work happens to engage with almost everything that weighs upon us in our tortured age - the fate of the earth, the closeness of calamity, the desperate possibility of regeneration amid the charred and blasted ruins - and that it does so without the hobnailed tread of pedestrian polemics, is just one of the many marvels for which we have to thank, yet again, this most indefatigable of modern magi.

· Anselm Kiefer: Aperiatur Terra is at White Cube, London SW1, from January 26 to March 17. Details: 020-7930 5373
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Anselm Kiefer's desolate landscapes address the most crucial issues of our times

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How do you like your contemporary art? A quick hit of juicy mischief, a larky take on mortality, binful of bluebottles, pocketful of glitter, everything you never wanted to know and more about the artist's entrails?

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We saw some of Anselm Kiefer's work in the Guggenheim. W e were prevented from taking photographs so I have sourced the works we saw from the Guggenheim website. I was very impressed by the huge scale  and the texture of the paintings – the paint stood out from the canvas quite significantly.  The photos don't do the work justice,  but just an indication because they fit with the 'self in landscape' theme we are working on this semester and they take a starkly different approach to the thematic,  in their forlorn and almost dystopian approach to landscape work.

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WEEKEND 3 SEMESTER 2 GERHARD RICHTER SEASCAPE

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WEEKEND 3 SEMESTER 2 GERHARD RICHTER SEASCAPE

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Link to a video of an older Seascape painting from 1975 which shows the brushwork in detail.

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WEEKEND 3 SEMESTER 2 ARTISTS RESEARCHED AFTER GUGGENHEIM VISIT

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WEEKEND 3 SEMESTER 2 ARTISTS RESEARCHED AFTER GUGGENHEIM VISIT

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Link to Guggenheim Museum Gerhard Richter painting

I've long been a fan of Gerhard Richter as I researched him in first year.     One of my favourite artists, whom I admire for his talent in various media. I was bowled over by  Seascape, which we saw in the Guggenheim.  This work is part of Richter's series of what he calls 'Photo Paintings' an addition to previous works, this one was made in 1998. It's so beautifully painted it really looks like a photograph until you get close up and see the actual paint on the canvas.

This painting also fits with my video essay subject of responding to 'What is a Body?' In the video essay,  I am trying to explore and respond to that question by looking at the ocean as a body and 'self' in its own right,  and the traces it leaves on landscape,  in keeping with the thematic I began working on last semester.

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Gerhard Richter (b. 1932) was born shortly before the outbreak of World War II in Dresden, which would become a part of East Germany following the end of the conflict. His interest for the Informalism and Expressionism that were developing on the other side of The Wall quickly led him to abandon his hometown. After establishing himself in Düsseldorf, he made "his first paintings based on photographs," through which he sought a "new beginning," and although he had previously created pieces in this style, Richter considered that the photo paintings from before 1962 belonged to the past. Within this category, the Seascapes was a series that Richter worked on from the end of the 1960s up until 1998, the date of Seascape ( Seestück), a piece in the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao's Collection.

This exhibition will be the first to present a broad variety of these works, in which the artist relies both on traditional sources-such as the melancholy and moody landscapes of German Romantic painter Caspar David Friedrich-as well as the popular snapshots taken while on vacation, in order to present a reflection on nature and visual perception. Through these paintings and drawings, Richter forces us to face the problem of representation, merging the painted surface and the photographic record into one. To do so, he applied highly diluted paint, achieving the smooth surface of a photograph, and like in many instant photos, he unfocused the image to make it more difficult to distinguish whether it is a photograph or a painting. In some of these works, the sea and the sky from different sources merge, becoming almost interchangeable, leaving it up to our perception to identify which is which.

Curator: Lucía Agirre

Gerhard Richter
Seascape [ Seestück], 1998
Oil on canvas
290 x 290 cm
Guggenheim Bilbao Museoa
© Gerhard Richter, VEGAP, Bilbao, 2019

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Gerhard Richter: Seascapes | Guggenheim Museum Bilbao

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Gerhard Richter (b. 1932) was born shortly before the outbreak of World War II in Dresden, which would become a part of East Germany following the end of the conflict. His interest for the Informalism and Expressionism that were developing on the other side of The Wall quickly led him to abandon his hometown.

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Article on JB Yeats at the Uillinn Arts Centre Skibbereen, showing some of his Irish landscape work

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WEEKEND 3 SEMESTER 2 CASPAR DAVID FRIEDRICH

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WEEKEND 3 SEMESTER 2 CASPAR DAVID FRIEDRICH

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For a self in landscape thematic I've included Casper David  Friedrich's  famous work below:

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I've also got a soft spot for Whistler's work. I like the idea of painting a landscape in the same colour hues. I've attempted to do this in one of my landscape paintings, using various shades of pinks and pink/blues to paint a scene from Bantry bay. (Work shown in portfolio)

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Painted in August 1871, this is the first of Whistler's Nocturnes. In these works Whistler aimed to convey a sense of the beauty and tranquility of the Thames by night. It was Frederick Leyland who first used the name 'nocturne' to describe Whistler's moonlit scenes. It aptly suggests the notion of a night scene, but with musical associations. The expression was quickly adopted by Whistler, who later explained,

By using the word 'nocturne' I wished to indicate an artistic interest alone, divesting the picture of any outside anecdotal interest which might have been otherwise attached to it. A nocturne is an arrangement of line, form and colour first' (quoted in Dorment and MacDonald, p.122).

Returning from a trip by steamer to Westminster, Whistler was inspired, one evening in August 1871, by a view of the river 'in a glow of rare transparency an hour before sunset' (Anna Whistler, the artist's mother, in a letter to Julia and Kate Palmer, 3 Nov. 1871, quoted in Dorment and MacDonald, p.122). He immediately rushed to his studio and painted a sunset ( Variations in Violet and Green, Musée D'Orsay, Paris) and this moonlit scene at one sitting. The picture is painted on panel, primed with dark grey paint, over which Whistler applied thin layers of pigment in order to create a contrasting sense of luminosity. The view is from Battersea looking across to Chelsea, and it is possible to make out features on the horizon, such as the tower of Chelsea Old Church on the right. In the foreground, a low barge and the figure of a fisherman are indicated with the minimum of detail, and the influence of Japanese art is evident in the restricted palette, the economy of line and the characteristic butterfly signature.

This picture was exhibited, along with Variations in Violet and Green, at the Dudley Gallery in November 1871. The critic for the Times revealed a rare appreciation of Whistler's Nocturnes, describing them as follows:

They are illustrations of the theory ... that painting is so closely akin to music that the colours of the one may and should be used, like the ordered sounds of the other; that painting should not aim at expressing dramatic emotions, depicting incidents of history or recording facts of nature, but should be content with moulding our moods and stirring our imaginations, by subtle combinations of colour, through which all that painting has to say to us can be said, and beyond which painting has no valuable or true speech whatever' (The Times, 14 November 1871).

Further reading
Richard Dorment and Margaret F. MacDonald, James McNeill Whistler, exhibition catalogue, Tate Gallery, London 1994, pp.122-3, no.46, reproduced in colour p.123.
Andrew Wilton and Robert Upstone (eds), The Age of Rossetti, Burne-Jones & Watts: Symbolism in Britain 1860-1910, exhibition catalogue, Tate Gallery, London 1997, pp.206-7 no.79, reproduced in colour p.207.
Andrew McLaren Young, Margaret F. MacDonald, Robin Spencer with the assistance of Hamish Miles, The Paintings of James MacNeill Whistler, New Haven and London, 1980, no.
103, reproduced in colour plate 106.

Frances Fowle
December 2000

James Abbot McNeill Whistler 1834-1903

Nocturne: Blue and Silver - Chelsea 1871

Signed with a butterfly and dated'71' in a cartouche at bottom. The frame, designed by Whistler, is also signed with a butterfly motif.
Oil on panel, 19 11/16 x 23 15/16 (50 x 60.8).
Presented to the National Gallery by the Misses Rachel F. and Jean I. Alexander under the terms of a Deed of Gift 1959; entered the collection as in 1972.Transferred to the Tate Gallery 1972.
Coll: Purchased from the artist by William Cleverley Alexander 1871; his daughters Rachel and Jean Alexander.
Exh: Dudley Gallery, 1871 (265); Grosvenor Gallery, 1879 (192); Société des XX, Brussels, 1884; Goupil Gallery, 1892 (18); Burlington Fine Arts Club, 1902 (34); Royal Scottish Academy, Edinburgh, 1904 (250); International Society of Sculptors, Painters & Gravers, 1905 (West Room, 31); Ecole des Beaux Arts, Paris, 1905 (72); Whitcchapel Gallery, Spring 1907 (Upper Gallery, 33); Burlington Fine Arts Club, 1910 (25); Tate Gallery, 1912 (21); The New English Art Club Retrospective Exhibition, Spring Gardens Gallery, 1925 (149); Royal Glasgow Institute of Fine Arts, 1937 (484); Two Hundred Years of British Painting, New York, St Louis, and San Francisco, 1956-7 (118); Arts Council Gallery, London and Knoedler Galleries, New York, 1960 (26); The Alexander Gift, National Gallery, 1972.
Lit: E. R. & J. Pennell, The Life of James McNeill Whistler, 1908, I, repr. facing p.162; Denys Sutton, Nocturne; The Art of James McNeill Whistler, 1963, p.64, repr. in col. pl.III.

This is probably the earliest of Whistler's 'Nocturnes'. First exhibited at the Dudley Gallery in 1871 as 'Harmony in Blue-green- Moonlight', its title had been changed to 'Nocturne in Blue-Green' by the time it was next exhibited, at the Grosvenor Gallery in 1879. A label on the back, perhaps in Whistler's hand, reads: '"Nocturne in Blue Green/Nocturne en Bleu vert- "/J.A.M. Whistler, London'. At the Goupil Gallery in 1892, however, the picture appeared as 'Nocturne Blue and Silver- Chelsea'. Whistler adopted the term 'Nocturne' in 1872 on F. R. Leyland's suggestion. In a letter, presumably of that year, he wrote to Leyland: 'I say, I can't thank you too much for the name "Nocturne" as the title for my moonlights. You have no idea what an irritation it proves to the critics and consequent pleasure to me; besides, it is really so charming, and does so poetically say all I want to say and no more than I wish!' (Val Prinsep, 'A Collector's Correspondence', Art Journal, 1892 p.252; the original letter is in the Library of Congress, Washington.)

T01571 was painted at Whistler's house at 2 Lindsey Row (96 Cheyne Walk). The view is from the Battersea side of the river, looking towards Chelsea church. The picture was bought from the Dudley Gallery exhibition by William Cleverley Alexander who afterwards commissioned Whistler to paint portraits of his daughters Cicely and Agnes Mary Alexander (Tate Gallery, , ).

Published in The Tate Gallery Report 1972-1974, London 1975.

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'Nocturne: Blue and Silver - Chelsea', James Abbott McNeill Whistler, 1871 | Tate

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Artwork page for 'Nocturne: Blue and Silver - Chelsea', James Abbott McNeill Whistler, 1871 Whistler painted this view from Battersea Bridge looking across the Thames towards Chelsea. The tower of Chelsea Old Church is just visible on the right, and a fisherman stands in the foreground looking out to a low barge.

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WEEKEND 3 SEMESTER 2 Article on JMW Turner

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WEEKEND 3 SEMESTER 2 Article on JMW Turner

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This is part of my landscape painting research. I have always been a big fan of Turner's work. I love the way he captures light,and gets softness into the work with blending. I've seen some of his work in the National Gallery, where it is displayed every January.

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Turner was the greatest English landscape painter, and one of the most successful and influential.

His most distinctive works, such as The Fighting Temeraire tugged to her Last Berth to be broken up, 1838 and Rain, Steam and Speed - The Great Western Railway, are still much-loved and admired.

Of humble origins and with an eccentric personality, his extraordinary talent and ambition took him to the top of his profession, in which he combined a love of nature with a belief in the ability of landscape painting to carry serious and noble meanings. The full extent of his work can be seen in the Tate.

Joseph Mallord William Turner, known as William but now called J. M. W. to distinguish him from another artist of the same name, was the son of a barber. He was born in the heart of commercial London, in Maiden Lane, near Covent Garden market, probably in early May 1775. His father encouraged his early artistic talent, but his mother's illness caused him to stay with his uncle in Middlesex, and it was there and with other relatives that he started to draw from nature.

In 1789, at the age of 14, he enrolled at the Royal Academy schools; a year later his first exhibit at the Royal Academy was hung, a watercolour of the Bishop's Palace, Lambeth. In this period, views of picturesque scenery, recording both ancient ruins and modern townscapes, were immensely popular, such as Blackfriars Cross, Hereford. Numerous illustrated books and sets of engravings provided much work for artists, including Turner.

The 1790s, therefore, were taken up by his extensive tours of England and Wales, filling sketchbooks with beautiful drawings and watercolour studies, and fulfilling commissions for publishers and local gentry and aristocrats. The artistic establishment quickly recognised his youthful talent and elected him an Associate of the Royal Academy in 1799 and a Royal Academician in 1802. He remained loyal to the Royal Academy all his life, being appointed as a council member in 1803 and serving as Professor of Perspective from 1807 to 1838.

Turner's own skills and his awareness of other artists' work grew as he visited his patrons' country house collections - there was no national gallery at this time. Alongside his study of the picturesque British landscape, he absorbed the lessons of the idealised classical landscapes of the French seventeenth-century artist Claude Lorrain and his many followers.

In 1800 Turner exhibited his first historical landscape, The Fifth Plague of Egypt, one of a series of great historical and biblical subjects that continued to include Snow Storm: Hannibal and his Army Crossing the Alps of 1812. This, like much of his work of the early 1800s, was inspired by his own first European journey across the Alps to Italy in 1802.

Turner's work was now not just topographical but also classical and romantic. It was based on the intense study of nature, its landscape, vegetation and weather, but was also intended to involve the viewer in the experience, as well as to create noble and moving subjects that would stand comparison with the old masters. Turner was beginning to see himself as part of that tradition.

Foreign travel was increasingly important to Turner at this time: Switzerland for its dramatic and romantic scenery, as in The Pass of St Gotthard, and Italy for its long classical and Renaissance history and culture, for instance, Rome, from the Vatican.

The varied scenery of French rivers, dramatic alpine mountains and gorges, and the sun-soaked plains of Rome were painted in their own right and as the context for historical, biblical, mythological and contemporary events. In all these it is colour, light and atmosphere that dominate, held together by Turner's striking sense of design and composition.

Turner's bequest of his studio contents to the nation on his death in 1851 revealed in his watercolour studies and unfinished oils the full extent of his mastery of abstract form. His admirer, the critic John Ruskin, who called him the 'founder of modern art', understood that even his most abstract studies, especially those in watercolour, showed that everything Turner painted was based on nature.
Andrew Greg, National Inventory Research Project, University of Glasgow

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The shining star of English landscape painting: J. M. W. Turner

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Discover artworks, explore venues and meet artists. Art UK is the online home for every public collection in the UK. Featuring over 300,000 artworks by over 50,000 artists.

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We were supposed to be having a sculpture workshop this weekend, but it was cancelled. I was scheduled to work Friday and Saturday of the weekend so I couldn't attend. Majella took over the weekend and used it for painting exercises. The class was instructed to make a series of landscape paintings . There was no exit brief as such Majella advised that everyone should  try to paint every day if possible.

The research for landscape painting follows

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WEEKEND 2 SEMESTER 2 HOW TO UNDERPAINT WITH ACRYLICS

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WEEKEND 2 SEMESTER 2 HOW TO UNDERPAINT WITH ACRYLICS

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To underpaint or not? You might not have even heard about underpainting or colour washes and what effect they have on your painting. So what exactly is it and should you do it?

What is underpainting?
The gist of it is in the name really. Underpainting can be a very rough or very detailed greyscale/single toned painting that sets the composition, tone and overall foundation of your painting.

Have you ever looked at a 16 century painting in a museum and wondered how they get their still-life's and portraits looking so life-like? Yup that's underpainting. And most likely the Flemish 7-Step technique. You read that right, 7 steps! The first four layers are in browns and greyscale... but that's a whole other post.

What are washes?
A wash is a single layer of colour covering the whole canvas.

Both washes and underpaintings are used to remove the canvas' vast expanse of white and set the tone of the painting. It can be quite frustrating later on to try and cover every single inch of white on the canvas, however having a layer of paint already down makes it SO much easier. Also, with acrylics especially, washes or underpaints will enable greater levels of opacity and less patchy colours in the later layer of colours you paint.

How should I begin a painting?
Whether you are painting with oils or acrylics, at the very least you should start with a colour wash. The only exception to this is when you are trying to finish a painting within two hours (i.e. our Art In Bloom Wine and Paint Parties! ).

What color should the wash be?
You can use the most dominant colour in the picture. So in a landscape this might be a blue or peach, and in a portrait, a flesh tint. Or you could use a contrasting colour such as raw sienna or orange. See what works for you. It should be a colour you wouldn't mind peeping through in areas.

Do I do a wash AND an underpainting?
It's usually one or the other.

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How to Underpaint with Acrylics - Art In Bloom Academy

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To underpaint or not? You might not have even heard about underpainting or colour washes and what effect they have on your painting. So what exactly is it and should you do it? What is underpainting? The gist of it is in the name really.

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WEEKEND 2 SEMESTER 2 VERMEER'S UNDERPAINTING TECHNIQUE

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WEEKEND 2 SEMESTER 2 VERMEER'S UNDERPAINTING TECHNIQUE

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I found a couple of articles on underpainting – a practice which Vermeer and other old Masters used. Underpainting was part of Glenn's brief for the landscape paintings for the video essay

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Vermeer's painting Technique

After the initial outline drawing was completed, Vermeer began the "dead coloring" (or underpainting as it is called today), one of the most important stages in his working procedure. Without a thorough knowledge and mastery of the underpainting technique, the extraordinary unity which characterizes Vermeer's most mature pictures may not have been easily achieved. The underpainting technique greatly facilitates the realization of finely balanced compositions, accurate depictions of light and chromatic subtleties.

Underpainting is rarely practiced today. For the last century, artists have simply begun painting directly on pre-prepared white canvases with full color surpassing anything but an abbreviated drawing. Therefore, neither the function nor the practice of underpainting is well understood.

LOOKING OVER VERMEER'S SHOULDER
The comprenesive guide to seventeenth-century Dutch fine-painting techniques, studio practices and materials, with particular focus on the work of Johannes Vermeer. PDF | 3 volumes

Looking Over Vermeer's Shoulder (beta version*)
author: Jonathan Janson (author of EssentialVermeer.com).
date: 2020
format: 3 Volumes: PDF
price: $29.95
200-plus color illustrations & diagrams

Looking Over Vermeer's Shoulder is a comprehensive study of the materials and painting techniques that made Vermeer one of the greatest masters of European art. But in order to form the clearest picture of his day-to-day practices, we must not only look at what went on inside Vermeer's studio, but what went inside the studios of his most accomplished colleagues as well.

Looking Over Vermeer's Shoulder, then, lays out in comprehensible language every facet of 17th-century painting practices including artistic training, canvas preparation, underdrawing, underpainting, glazing, palette, brushes, pigments and composition. A number of issues as they relate specifically to the art of Vermeer (camera obscura, studio organization and brushwork) are investigated in exhaustive detail. The reader will be also treated to a tour of how Vermeer applied his uncanny skills to depicting some his most fascinating motifs, such as wall-maps, floor tiles, pictures-within-pictures and Turkish tapestries.

Bolstered by his qualifications as a Vermeer connoisseur and practicing painter the three-volume PDF format permits the author to address each of the book's 24 topics with exhaustive attention. By observing at close quarters the studio practices of Vermeer and his preeminent contemporaries step-by-step the reader will acquire a concrete understanding of 17th-century painting, methods that will allow him gain a fresh view of Vermeer's 35 works of art, which reveal a seamless unity of craft and poetry.

* please note:
Looking Over Vermeer's Shoulder has not undergone a final copy edit, so minor errors in grammar, footnotation and image captions may be occasionally encountered. As soon as the final copy edit becomes available the purchaser will be notified and, on request, receive it without delay or charge.

In its simplest terms, an underpainting is a monochrome version of the final painting that fixes the composition, gives volume and substance to the forms, and distribute darks and lights in order to create the effect of illumination. The lack of color probably explains the word "dead" in the term dead painting. Color was applied over the underpainting only when it was thoroughly dry. Underpaintings were usually executed in warm earth tones over neutral gray or warm brown grounds. Raw umber, at times mixed with black, were frequently used for this purpose. Cool gray underpaintings were also employed. An example of a sketchy brown underpainting can be seen in the right-hand side of the face of an unfinished portrait by the Italian painter Andrea del Sarto(see$$$$$). Relatively ew underpaintings have survived.

Portrait of a Woman in Yellow (detail of an unfinished portrait showing the underpainting in the shadowed side of the face)
Andrea del Sarto
c. 1529-1530
Oil on poplar panel, 64.3 x 50.1 cm.
The Royal Collection, Buckingham Palace, London

The Sacrifice of Isaac
Andrea del Sarto
c. 1527
208 x 171 cm.
Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, Ohio

In this unfinished painting, the angle has been underpainted in monochrome browns while the color has begun to be roughed in the early stages of the working-up stage.

In Leonardo da Vinci's unfinished Adoration of the Magi(see$$$$$) (fig. 1), both the initial drawing (of the Virgin) and various stages of the underpainting (of the infant Jesus) can be clearly seen. Rubens used white to heighten the illuminated areas of the underpainting.

fig. 1 Adoration of the Magi
Leonardo da Vinci
1481-1482
Oil on panel, 246 x 243 cm.
Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence

Thus, with a minimum of effort, the artist was able to envision the totality of his pictorial idea. He could observe the defective parts and correct them with relative ease, for it is far easier to model form with a few neutral tones than with more complex color mixtures. Even broad areas of the canvas which seemed too dark could be easily worked up and lighter ones darkened. The degree of finish and the exact colors used in the underpainting stage varied from school to school and even painter to painter. It cannot be ascertained if Vermeer defined his underpainting as accurately as those of Leonardo, but laboratory evidence indicates that they were more sketchy. Vermeer generally used black and brown in his underpainting.

Rembrandt and Rubens, in particular, are know to have used underpainting very effectively. It is believed that artists once kept a number of underpaintings in their studio waiting for clients' interest before completing the painting with full color and detail.

Underpainting was not only a rapid and economical way to envision and elaborate the composition, it aided the painter to create a number of optical effects that cannot be achieved by direct mixing of paint.

Vermeer's Underpainting

It now seems certain that underpainting was a fundamental step in Vermeer's creative process. Laboratory analysis demonstrates that in the underpainting stage, the artist made many major and minor alterations in the type, placement and dimensions of objects found in his compositions. ¹ Chairs, maps, framed paintings, musical instruments, baskets, a standing cavalier and even a dog can no longer be seen where they were originally represented. Vermeer probably painted them out in the underpainting stage having seen that they did not produce the desired effect or distracted from the painting's theme. He changed the positions of arms and fingers to create precisely the gesture he desired. Edges of maps were moved to the left or right to stabilize the composition. The contours of a young women's garments were altered to make them more elegant, and shadows were lightened or darkened, all depending of the effect of the underpainting.

It has been noticed that in The Geographer there are various passages that seems to have been left uncompleted or that have become exposed over time. Perhaps, a significant part of the deep shaded area of the carpet reveals Vermeer's method of underpainting. If this is so, his method would appear similar to those of his contemporaries.

Did Vermeer Use the Camera Obscura to Define His Underpaintings?

Lawrence Gowing, a painter and one of the most penetrating of Vermeer scholars, believed that an x-ray photograph of the face of the Girl with a Pearl Earring (fig. 3) constitutes evidence of the artist's painting method. X-rays images reveal the presence of lead, which is the primary component of lead white, the principal white pigment used by painters until the mid-19 century. Gowing assumes that the white areas of the image correspond the underpainting stage and was a direct transcription of the incidence of light on the screen of the camera obscura. Particularly suggestive of the camera obscura's effect is the perfectly spherical highlight of the pearl earring which has been altered in the final version. The same can be said for the dim highlight of the right-hand eye. To explain the difference between the underpainting and the final image Gowing held that "the artist, evidently proceeded, in finishing the picture, to mediate between objectivity and convention." ¹ Since the x-ray image only reveals the presence of the heavier lead white and the remaining areas are registered as black, contrast is exaggerated.

fig. 3 Girl with a Pearl Earring (x-ray image)
Johnnes Vermeer

Gowing's idea has been corroborated by Phillip Steadman's more recent hypothesis that Vermeer may have used the camera obscura not only to trace the projected camera obscura image on the canvas, but also to paint in strict correlation with camera obscura image always close at hand.

A Hypothesis of Vermeer's Underpainting Methods

The image below (fig. 4) shows a reasonable hypothesis of Vermeer's underpainting method, as conceived by the author of this website, Jonathan Janson.
Click here to access a large image of the underpainting.

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Vermeer's painting Technique After the initial outline drawing was completed, Vermeer began the "dead coloring" (or underpainting as it is called today), one of the most important stages in his working procedure. Without a thorough knowledge and mastery of the underpainting technique, the extraordinary unity which characterizes Vermeer's most mature pictures may not have been easily achieved.

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WEEKEND 2 SEMESTER 2 LEON KOSSOFF OBITUARY

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WEEKEND 2 SEMESTER 2 LEON KOSSOFF OBITUARY

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WEEKEND 2 SEMESTER 2 LEON KOSSOFF WILLESDEN JUNCTION MORNING IN OCTOBER

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WEEKEND 2 SEMESTER 2 LEON KOSSOFF WILLESDEN JUNCTION MORNING IN OCTOBER

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WEEKEND 2 SEMESTER 2 LEON KOSSOFF OUTSIDE KILBURN UNDERGROUND

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WEEKEND 2 SEMESTER 2 LEON KOSSOFF OUTSIDE KILBURN UNDERGROUND

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WEEKEND 2 SEMESTER 2 LEON KOSSOFF VIEW OF DALSTON JUNCTION

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WEEKEND 2 SEMESTER 2 LEON KOSSOFF VIEW OF DALSTON JUNCTION

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The next works are by Leon Kossoff (1926-2019) whom I was introduced to via the article on Sean Scully. His works are based on familiar scenes in the London landscape. Having lived in London for over 20 years I am familiar with some of his locations. I absolutely adore the way he represents them with bold brushstrokes and muted colours and uses the paint thickly to give texture. I discovered that  if you turn any of these images upside down they appear like contemporary abstract paintings.

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WEEKEND 2 SEMESTER 2 SEAN SCULLY ARTICLE THE SPECTATOR

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WEEKEND 2 SEMESTER 2 SEAN SCULLY ARTICLE THE SPECTATOR

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Sean Scully once told me about his early days as a plasterer's mate. At the age of 17 he was helping a craftsman who would often accidentally drop a good deal of plaster on his youthful assistant's head, especially after a midday break in the pub. Scully spent his own lunchtimes differently. He would roar on his scooter to the Tate Gallery, and spend the time staring at a single picture: 'The Chair' by Vincent van Gogh.

That picture is one of two reference points in Sea Star, his beautiful exhibition at the National Gallery. Scully pays homage to it in two groups of three paintings, entitled 'Arles Abend Vincent' and 'Arles Abend Deep'. Neither looks much like a chair; the panels resemble, if anything, sections of a wall (if not a plastered one). Scully has, in fact, taken a series of photographs of dry stone walls on the island of Aran. The walls are like a puzzle - some stones vertical, some horizontal, wider or narrower.

The 'Arles Abend' paintings are similar, except that they are built out of rectangles of loosely brushed, sumptuously rich colour. That's something perhaps he learned from those lunch breaks in front of Van Gogh. The physical presence of a paint-stroke is something that can't be replaced, he told me, containing as it does 'the thinking, the feeling and the making, all compressed into a single action: a kind of low-relief sculpture of what happened'.

The wide brush marks give visible energy to Scully's works - sweeping this way and that, here more agitated, there calmer. This movement interacts with the colour-chord of each picture - ochres, dark crimsons and olive greens in the case of the 'Arles Abend' pictures.

Encountering a room of Scullys you might think: 'Oh, a lot of stripes and squares'. But if you look at one for a while it takes you over. Like the teenage painter spending his lunch hours with Van Gogh, you could stand and look for ages.

More recently Scully has fallen for a late Turner - 'The Evening Star' (about 1830) - which is hung in the exhibition (Van Gogh's 'Chair' is upstairs in the main galleries). This is, at first glance, an arrangement of horizontal bands of colour which resolve into beach, ocean, cloud and a sky just changing from day to night.

Scully's pictures don't translate into landscape that directly. He remains on the non-figurative side of the border between abstraction and representation - but quite close to the frontier. His magnificent 'Land-line Star' (2017) remains a sequence of stripes, stacked above one another - blue, black, dark red plus one an indescribable whiteish, pinky, blue-tinged zone that seems to ripple and crackle. But still it is a bit like looking at a moving river or the waves of the sea.

Scully moved from plastering to painting in the early 1970s just as painting - especially abstract painting - was going out of style. He has consequently spent a creative lifetime not quite in fashion, which may be why it's only now in his seventies that it's becoming apparent what a terrific artist he is.

Being out of step with what art history was supposed to be doing has been the fate of many important painters. It befell Leon Kossoff who, a generation older than Scully, emerged only to disappear from view while abstraction ruled in the 1960s. Despite a Tate retrospective in the 1990s, Kossoff has still not quite received his due.

He is a truly great painter, but one whose work has not been seen enough in recent years. For that reason the current exhibition at Piano Nobile (96/129 Portland Road, W11) is especially welcome. Kossoff occupies a territory just on the figurative side of that frontier with abstraction. Each of his picture starts with what he has called 'exciting visual encounters' - either with one of his small circle of familiar models or a bit of London townscape, frequently in the environs of Willesden where he has long lived.

The places Kossoff selects would not strike everyone as exciting. But he makes you feel they are. A charcoal and pastel drawing of the railway lines at 'Willesden Junction' (1962) has the exhilaration and spatial expansion of Turner's alpine scenes.

His oils are painted on boards, which has an effect on the way they look. Scully favours aluminium or linen, on which the pigment flows smoothly. In contrast Kossoff's paint is slashed and scooped across the wood, building up in gnarled masses with a splatter of flying drips. 'Christchurch, Spitalfields' (1989) takes off like a rocket, a red brick school building trembling like a vision beneath a lowering sky. It is a great pleasure to see such paintings by natural light in the London townhouses which Piano Nobile occupies: the perfect environment for Kossoff. This show, like the Scully, is highly recommended.

It is a bit like looking at a moving river or the waves of the sea

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Sean Scully once told me about his early days as a plasterer's mate. At the age of 17 he was helping a craftsman who would often accidentally drop a good deal of plaster on his youthful assistant's head, especially after a midday break in the pub. Scully spent his own lunchtimes differently.

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I found this article from the MOMA collection which discusses Rainer's work in American contemporary art, dance and film making. Rainer choreogoraphed this work in 1966 then performed it  in 1978.  I feel she creates here a piece of visual art rather than a characteristic choregraphed dance piece. Using 'every day movements' , she describes this as ' about a kind of pacing where a pose is never struck'  Rainer says in this article that  this piece was created in answer to her question of    'the pleasure I took from being looked at, this dual exhibitionist relation of dancer to audience'. I feel it speaks of the artist as a spectacle of her own work and offers a certain vulnerability within that – she is laid bare for whatever interpretation the audience wishes to put on the work.   In that respect, I feel it constitutes a  powerful video essay that shows that not every story needs a narrative - the narrative can be in movement alone. I'm interested in exploring the different  types of video essay and maybe combining various formats within my own attempt.

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1978. Video (black and white, sound), 10:21 min.

Yvonne Rainer-regarded as a foundational force in American contemporary art, film, and postmodern dance-began her career in New York in 1956. After a false start in acting, she entered the Martha Graham School, a dance school and associated company named for its founder, who is largely credited with revolutionizing modern dance. There, Rainer discovered a passion for this art form. She was trained in a style of movement characterized by expressiveness and virtuosity and in narrative choreography filled with drama and psychological intensity. But Rainer grew dissatisfied with the conventions of modern dance and the traditional relationship between dancer and audience. As she has explained: "Early on, I began to question the pleasure I took in being looked at, this dual voyeuristic, exhibitionistic relation of dancer to audience." ¹ Fueled by such questioning, and her opposition to the tenets of classical and modern dance, she created Trio A.

Rainer choreographed Trio A in 1966, and performed it for the camera in 1978. Written for a solo performer, it incorporates no music and features a seamless flow of everyday movements like toe tapping, walking, and kneeling. "[It] would be about a kind of pacing where a pose is never struck," the artist once described. "There would be no dramatic changes, like leaps. There was a kind of folky step that had a rhythm to it, and I worked a long time to get the syncopation out of it." ² Trio A positioned Rainer as a leader among the dancers, composers, and visual artists who were involved in the Judson Dance Theater (which she co-founded in 1962), an avant-garde collaborative that ushered in an era of contemporary dance through stripped-down choreography and casual and spontaneous performances.

Yvonne Rainer, "No Manifesto," 1965.

Yvonne Rainer's "No Manifesto"
A year before creating Trio A, Yvonne Rainer wrote her "No Manifesto" (1965). Through it, she declared her opposition to the dominant forms of dance of the period-typified by Martha Graham-and outlined the tenets of her radical new approach:

No to spectacle.
No to virtuosity.
No to transformations and magic and make-believe.
No to the glamour and transcendency of the star image.
No to the heroic.
No to the anti-heroic.
No to trash imagery.
No to involvement of performer or spectator.
No to style.
No to camp.
No to seduction of spectator by the wiles of the performer.
No to eccentricity.
No to moving or being moved. ³

Early Recognition-a Double-Edged Sword?
Sometimes, artists find that groundbreaking work produced early in their career may overshadow the rest of their output. This was the case for Rainer with Trio A and "No Manifesto." In her words: "It's a little unfortunate, because it eclipses everything else I've done. [It's] the most out-there, visible signature of my career. That and the 'No Manifesto.'" ⁴ In the 1970s, she stopped dancing altogether and turned her attention fully to filmmaking, producing films including Lives of Performers (1972), Kristina Talking Pictures (1976), and (1990). It was not until the 2000s that Rainer would return to choreography.

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1978. Video (black and white, sound), 10:21 min. Yvonne Rainer-regarded as a foundational force in American contemporary art, film, and postmodern dance-began her career in New York in 1956. After a false start in acting, she entered the Martha Graham School, a dance school and associated company named for its founder, who is largely credited with revolutionizing modern dance.

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WEEKEND 2 SEMESTER 2 Yvonne Rainer Trio A

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WEEKEND 2 SEMESTER 2 Yvonne Rainer Trio A

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WEEKEND 2 SEMESTER 2 CHRIS MARKER WORKBOOK FOR LA JETTE

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WEEKEND 2 SEMESTER 2 CHRIS MARKER WORKBOOK FOR LA JETTE

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Chris Marker article in The Guardian

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Chris Marker was a phantom, an escape artist, a shapeshifter. He told friends he came from Ulan Bator, Mongolia. Born in 1921 in a pleasant Parisian suburb, Christian-François Bouche-Villeneuve racked up many pseudonyms and monikers: Sandor Krasna, Jacopo Berenzi, Fritz Markassin. Early on, as if in anticipation of the new vocabularies and identities that would proliferate in the digital era, he signed himself Chris.Marker.

He rarely gave interviews and was happy to be represented by images of a cat. But he was no hermit or recluse. His elusiveness was a tool for creation. It furnished him with freedom. Untethered by biography, unshackled by celebrity, he was able to drift through the second half of the 20th century witnessing, documenting and meditating on its political and imaginative upheavals.

Across many fields - in graphic design, multimedia, but most of all in film - he made the activity of thinking about images, whether photographic or moving, seem both profound and playful. He had prominent admirers, among them Francis Ford Coppola and Terry Gilliam, the latter reworking his still-photograph-constructed time-travel masterpiece La Jetée (1962) as 12 Monkeys (1995). But his work, at once prolix and difficult to see, mostly appeared as clandestine and spectral as its maker.

A new survey at London's Whitechapel Gallery offers a rare opportunity to engage with a broad cross-section of Marker's protean productions, including a never-before-seen version of La Jetée with an alternative opening sequence. For co-curator Chris Darke, who frequently corresponded and also worked with Marker, the show reveals the ways in which the artist's "central subject was intelligence, a very particular, astute intelligence that's also full of political acuity, humour and lyricism".

The world that Marker navigated over the course of the 1950s was full of deconstruction and dreams. Colonised peoples everywhere were feverishly trying to create new societies. One of his earliest films, Statues Also Die (1953), a collaboration with Alain Resnais, is a startlingly bold critique of European approaches to African art. A voiceover, using the language of Afro-futurism - a school of thought that sees the abduction, transportation to the "new world" and ritualistic violence meted out to Africans during the slave trade as a form of proto-science fiction - claims: "We [the west] are the Martians of Africa. We disembark from our planet with our ways of seeing, with our white magic, and with our machines." The film was banned in France for 15 years.

Marker was instinctively cosmopolitan, but his perspective was subaltern rather than aristocratic. He journeyed to China, Israel and Cuba - societies grappling with modernisation, with fashioning brave new worlds. He was a passionate anti-imperialist, someone who always sided with the weak (he loved cats because, he claimed, "a cat is never on the side of power"), but he later worried that in his pre-1962 films he'd treated authoritarian regimes with kid gloves. Later works such as The Sixth Side of the Pentagon (1967), about a 100,000-strong anti-Vietnam war march, would be less partisan.

According to Naeem Mohaiemen, an award-winning film-maker preoccupied with histories of the Bangladeshi left, this tonal shift gave political documentarians a license to develop more equivocal voices. "In The Sixth Side his narration displays the capacity to speak, even within the white heat of the moment, about the possibilities of failure. He's not Norman Mailer, sounding like Olympus proclaiming from on high; Marker still had palpable affection for the movement, even as he critiqued it. That capacity was profoundly influential for my generation, as we struggled to make sense of revolutionary left politics from within the debris of a previous epoch's dreams."

Marker's work can be seen as a more radical companion to Edward Steichen's The Family of Man, the hugely popular 1955 exhibition of photographs of men and women - united by things such as love, children, death - from all around the world. It's rich with sensuous humanism and a near-ethnographic curiosity in peoples and perspectives. Whether in his colourful and innovative book design for the Petite Planète travel guide series (1954-58); Staring Back, an aptly titled collection of protest photographs taken between 1952 and 2006; or in his dreamlike documentary Sans Soleil (1982), which has been widely hailed as one of the most influential non-fiction films of the last few decades, there's never a trace of exoticism or voyeurism.

Emiko Omori, director of the newly released documentary To Chris Marker, An Unsent Letter, spent the second world war in an internment camp for Japanese Americans. "Growing up in California," she recalls, "I came out of those camps not wanting to be Japanese. We are often stuck in our own upbringings, but his films opened so many doors of possibility, and my mind to other ways of seeing and relating."

Marker's films are often described as writerly, and he's regularly cited as an early master of the essay film - a ruminative, often self-reflexive form of non-fiction (other practitioners include Jean-Luc Godard, Adam Curtis and Mark Cousins), the increasing popularity of which was marked by a recent season at London's BFI Southbank. But his actual writings - poetry, current affairs essays, even a 1949 novel entitled The Forthright Spirit - are little known. The show's catalogue includes a translation of his essay on Cocteau's Orphée (1950) that is especially fascinating, argues Darke, "because it's Marker meditating about the poetic capacities of cinema before he becomes a film-maker".

Chris Marker's workbook for the creation of La Jetée

In fact, says Darke, "Marker was constantly exploring the relationship between word and image, page and screen". This interplay between text and image is at its most delightful in Marker's photo-essay book Coréennes (1958), and in Commentaires (1961), a collection of early film scripts that were a key influence on Richard Hollis's design for John Berger's Ways of Seeing (1972), a bestselling work whose analysis of the relationship between art and society led one critic to describe it as "Mao's Little Red Book for a generation of art students". Here, photos and graphic illustrations are as important as the words, which are generously distributed so that the text feels aphoristic, as quietly resonant as a haiku. Each page spread is spacious; not a clump of information to be absorbed, but a field of potential relations to be traversed.

Marker didn't regard artistic forms as sacred. He didn't believe in the primacy of celluloid or the cinema screen. He was continually embracing and experimenting with new technologies: one of his richest later works was a CD-Rom entitled Immemory (1997); he created Photoshop cartoon-collages for the French website Poptronics; the Whitechapel show includes a projection of Ouvroir: The Movie (2010), a tour of a museum he created on Second Life, as well as the UK premiere of Zapping Zone (Proposal for an Imaginary Television) (1990-94), a sprawling assemblage of videos, computers and light boxes.

"Marker was always interested in transformation," recalls Darke. This fascination with the ability of new technologies to transform ideas of human identity, social connection and the nature of memory makes him a strikingly contemporary figure whose work has been embraced by young art students as much as cinephiles. His claim to be a "bricoleur" - a collector of pre-existing visual material - is resonant now that the harvesting, assembling and curation of images has become as important as their creation. His fondness for revisiting old material and reusing it in new contexts resonates with the present era's unprecedented ability not only to store huge digital archives, but to click, drag and recontextualise their contents across limitless formats.

At a time when corporations and governments alike are hell-bent on surveilling and snooping on citizens, Marker's anonymity feels like a thrilling and prophetic act of resistance. His willingness to work collaboratively - whether as part of the group of directors (including Agnès Varda and Joris Ivens) that made the omnibus Far from Vietnam (1967) or with the Medvedkin Group, who worked on agit-garde productions documenting insurgent union members - signals not just a lack of ego, but a socialist strategy that's of great relevance to today's austerity-hit young artists.

Always on the move, sometimes against the tide; collecting, logging, speculating about images; teaching us that we don't have to be slaves to spectacle but can use photography as an instrument of thought - Marker's work still feels like liberation, a road map to newfoundlands. SS

A museum built by Chris Marker in Second Life, the online virtual world

I first saw La Jetée in a film history course at the University of British Columbia, in the early 1970s. I imagine that I would have read about it earlier, in passing, in works about science fiction cinema, but I doubt I had much sense of what it might be. And indeed, nothing I had read or seen had prepared me for it. Or perhaps everything had, which is essentially the same thing.

I can't remember another single work of art ever having had that immediate and powerful an impact, which of course makes the experience quite impossible to describe. As I experienced it, I think, it drove me, as RD Laing had it, out of my wretched mind. I left the lecture hall where it had been screened in an altered state, profoundly alone. I do know that I knew immediately that my sense of what science fiction could be had been permanently altered.

Part of what I find remarkable about this memory today was the temporally hermetic nature of the experience. I saw it, yet was effectively unable to see it again. It would be over a decade before I would happen to see it again, on television, its screening a rare event. Seeing a short foreign film, then, could be the equivalent of seeing a UFO, the experience surviving only as memory. The world of cultural artefacts was only atemporal in theory then, not yet literally and instantly atemporal. Carrying the memory of that screening's intensity for a decade after has become a touchstone for me. What would have happened had I been able to rewind? Had been able to rent or otherwise access a copy? It was as though I had witnessed a Mystery, and I could only remember that when something finally moved - and I realised that I had been breathlessly watching a sequence of still images - I very nearly screamed.

I was exposed to Chris Marker's work at a particularly impressionable age. He's been a huge influence. Bowie and I shared an admiration for La Jetée, so we contrived to pay homage to it in Jump, They Say. The idea of making those iconic still images move seemed both exciting and somehow a little sacrilegious. I was deeply relieved to hear that Mr Marker was pleased and not offended by the gesture.

One of the things I find so seductive about Marker's films is the sense of nostalgia that permeates much of his work, a tone of reminiscence as if you, the viewer, had a shared history with him. At the same time, one is never allowed to forget the constructed nature of memory. This is perfectly illustrated in the marvellous sequence in La Jetée when the time traveller and the woman visit a museum of natural history, an enchanted afternoon in an artificial Eden. In these frozen moments of happiness, it becomes possible to forget that some of the animals with which they cavort are already extinct, at the same time as the distinction between the living and the dead is temporarily removed.

Chris Marker: resistance fighter, escape artist, film-maker - in pictures
Watch an extract from Chris Marker's classic film La Jetée - video

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'Thrilling and prophetic': why film-maker Chris Marker's radical images influenced so many artists

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Chris Marker was a phantom, an escape artist, a shapeshifter. He told friends he came from Ulan Bator, Mongolia. Born in 1921 in a pleasant Parisian suburb, Christian-François Bouche-Villeneuve racked up many pseudonyms and monikers: Sandor Krasna, Jacopo Berenzi, Fritz Markassin.

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Studio International - Visual Arts, Design and Architecture

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In this exhibition of more than 30 of Scully's paintings, prints and pastels, JMW Turner's The Evening Star provides the jumping-off point for the artist's works

The National Gallery, London
13 April - 11 August 2019

by BETH WILLIAMSON

Exhibitions of contemporary art at the National Gallery in London are becoming the norm. These are especially interesting when, as is often the case, a contemporary artist is invited to respond to the National Gallery's collection. Three years ago, Sean Scully (b1945, Dublin) was invited to do just that. Scully chose to take Joseph Mallord William Turner's painting The Evening Star (c1830) as his point of departure.

Set out in three linked gallery spaces on the ground floor of the National Gallery, Scully's works are fresh and vibrant. The prevailing motif is one that he is well known for and his stripes and blocks of colour hover somewhere between European painting and its rich histories, and the unique nature of American abstraction. These are confident works and, like Scully himself, are undaunted by the venue or the presence of Turner's The Evening Star. Scully likes to joke that he chose a work by Turner because Turner's father was a barber like his own, but more important is their shared fondness for the Kent coast in the south of England. Turner attended school in the Kent town of Margate and visited throughout his life. Scully recalls a rare walk with his father in nearby Sheerness when he was about eight years old. His memories are acutely sensory - the slap of feet on wet sand, the rolling of the waves, the humidity of the air and the yellow-grey light at the end of the day. These sensations are what he recognises in Turner's painting and what he explores in his own work shown here, especially in his Landline paintings.

The Evening Star hangs in the centre of the first gallery space. It portrays a transitional moment in nature as the evening star first appears in daylight before giving way to the light of the moon. In the foreground of the shoreline, a small dog accompanies a boy with a shrimping net. Scully calls it an in between painting - between day and night, between land and sea. The Landline works in this room immediately demonstrate Scully's interest in the horizontal nature of Turner's The Evening Star. Meanwhile, Scully's triptych Arles Abend Vincent (2013) is a response to Vincent van Gogh's Chair (1888), the painting that Scully says "made it possible for me to enter the world of art and to think that I could actually make paintings". There are other references to Van Gogh in the exhibition in the Arles Abend Deep (2017) triptych.

If we walk into the second gallery space and look back, we can see Turner's The Evening Star through the doorway, cleverly flanked by Scully's Landline Star (2017) and Landline Pool (2018). While it is an obvious curatorial strategy to set the corresponding works in dialogue, it is an effective one. The neat twist here is that the relevant works are hung in different spaces - The Evening Star in the first gallery and the two Landline paintings in this one - which makes for more interesting possibilities. This spatial shift introduces a distancing, which perhaps allows more room for visitors to think about the temporal shift from the 1800s to now and to draw their own conclusions about how the works might be connected.

The exhibition's curator, Colin Wiggins, claims that this is a two-way dialogue, so, while Scully takes inspiration from Turner, Scully's works enable us to appreciate elements of abstraction in the work of Turner. I am unconvinced by this last claim, although I do find myself sympathising with Wiggins's belief that there is no such thing as abstract painting, in Scully's case at least. Everything Scully paints is undoubtedly about experience, about somehow conveying that experience through a visual equivalence.

Other works in this space include Scully's Human 3 (2018) series. While the images are constructed from his trademark stripes, squares and blocks of colour, the windows and doors they suggest invoke the human figure that might look through the window or walk through the door. This resonates with an idea that Scully is fond of, that his paintings hover between abstraction and representation. This makes more sense when he talks about different experiences that have influenced him, such as the acute poverty of his childhood and the death of his son, or the enduring impact of music, summers spent in Bavaria and visits to Morocco.

Strands of influence are seldom singular and this is certainly the case for the works exhibited in the third and final gallery space. Let us consider, for instance, the student trip that Scully made to Morocco in 1969, and which has had a lasting effect on him. He has vivid recollections still: "After visiting Morocco, I became fascinated by cloth, by pattern and the pattern moved as it was carried around by the people." In works such as Robe Blue Blue Durrow (2018) and Robe Magdalena (2017), there are clear references in the titles to cloth, but this is not straightforward as the titles include other references, too. Robe Magdalena references Mary Magdalene, the penitent prostitute of the New Testament, while Robe Blue Blue Durrow contains a reference to the seventh-century Irish manuscript The Book of Durrow, which Scully admires.

The largest painting in this room, and in the exhibition, is Landline China 8 (2018), painted by Scully precisely for the space in which it hangs. At three metres high and almost two metres wide, it is significantly bigger than any other work shown and it dominates the space. It references China's ancient cultural history; the lucky number eight and a specific colour symbolism, such as red for good fortune. I do not doubt Scully's interest in Chinese cultural history, but perhaps the painting is also self-referential. Scully has had five large exhibitions in China since 2014 and, given his artistic confidence, Landline Chine 8 conceivably celebrates that success.

There are so many influences rippling through this exhibition that it is difficult to anchor everything to a single painting from the National Gallery's collection. Turner's The Evening Star was chosen by Scully and is posited as a central, but by no means sole, point of reference, so it seems curious to me that Van Gogh's Chair, critical to Scully's development as an artist, isn't here, too. Still, this exhibition is encouraging in its ambition to bring contemporary art into dialogue with such an important historic collection and presumably it hopes to appeal to new audiences. Perhaps those who visit will be emboldened to wander through the main collection and seek out Van Gogh's Chair.

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Sea Star: Sean Scully at the National Gallery

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The National Gallery, London 13 April - 11 August 2019 by BETH WILLIAMSON Exhibitions of contemporary art at the National Gallery in London are becoming the norm. These are especially interesting when, as is often the case, a contemporary artist is invited to respond to the National Gallery's collection.

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Arles Abend Deep - another Van Gogh inspired work

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Arles Abend Vincent - inspired by Vincent Van Gogh

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WEEKEND 2 SEMESTER 2 SEAN SCULLY TONIO AT THE TATE

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WEEKEND 2 SEMESTER 2 SEAN SCULLY TONIO AT THE TATE

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These following paintings are by Irish American artist Sean Scully. They are similar in style to the type of paintings Tony Carroll asked us to do, just using blocks of colour.

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Tony Carroll  recommended looking at the work of Lucien Freud, as the artist uses pops of colour next to each other for texture/contrast. I found this interesting article as a result.

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For most people the aftermath of a punch in the face means a phone call to the police or a trip to A&E. But not Lucian Freud. His reaction to a nasty altercation with a taxi driver was to put the pain and anger aside and head to the studio to get his rather impressive black eye down on canvas.

Sotheby's today announced it is to auction a painting remarkable on many levels. Not only were the circumstances unusual, but the painting, Self-Portrait With a Black Eye, has been largely unknown to the art world for the past 30 years. It has never been recorded in the mountains of published literature on Freud and never publicly exhibited. Instead, it has remained in the same collection - private and European and from which four other Freud works will be sold - since it was painted in 1978.

The auction house believes the painting is the most important Freud self-portrait ever to come to market and estimates its value at up to £4m, expecting it to beat the £3.7m record for a Freud self-portrait set in 2005. It will probably not come close, however, to the record £17m reportedly paid by Roman Abramovich for Freud's 1995 painting Benefits Supervisor Sleeping.

Sotheby's expert Oliver Barker called the life-size portrait extraordinary. He said: "I first saw this picture several years ago and I was completely gobsmacked. It's not a big painting but its presence is just completely overpowering and shows Freud at the height of his powers."

The full circumstances of the altercation are not known but Barker said he would not be surprised if Freud had been goading the taxi driver - "they do normally have quite thick skins".

The man who originally bought the painting had been due to sit for Freud that day and was at Freud's studio when the artist arrived freshly bruised. He told his sitter to "go away", that he needed to paint himself there and then.

Freud, who was approaching 60 when it was painted, is known for his turbulent life in which violence has played a definite part. Talking about the role of Francis Bacon in his life he once said: "I used to have a lot of fights. It wasn't because I liked fighting, it was really just that people said things to me to which I felt the only reply was to hit them."

Barker said the immediacy of the newly discovered portrait was one of its most striking features. "Freud is very interested in the whole idea of paint mimicking flesh and this painting is not about flattery, it is about brutal, hard painterly reality."

That so little is known about the painting is testament to Freud himself, said Barker. He is an artist completely unbothered by self-publicity: he is "addicted to the act of painting".

According to Sotheby's, Freud - now 87 and in many eyes Britain's greatest living painter - has been to see the painting and enjoyed the experience, presumably rather more than he did in 1978.

The painting will be sold at Sotheby's on 10 February in a busy week of postwar and contemporary art sales in London. Aside from the Freud paintings, Sotheby's is selling works by Peter Doig, Piero Manzoni, Andy Warhol and Willem de Kooning as well as a huge Gerhard Richter oil painting, Abstraktes Bild. Highlights at Christie's include Yves Klein's Relief éponge or, estimated to be worth £5m to £7m, as well as works by Anish Kapoor, Martin Kippenberger and Frank Auerbach.
Topics

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£4m 'fare' for Lucian Freud painting inspired by fight with cabbie

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For most people the aftermath of a punch in the face means a phone call to the police or a trip to A&E. But not Lucian Freud. His reaction to a nasty altercation with a taxi driver was to put the pain and anger aside and head to the studio to get his rather impressive black eye down on canvas.

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WEEKEND 2 SEMESTER 2 MONET - SEVEN HAYSTACKS OF SUMMER

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WEEKEND 2 SEMESTER 2 MONET - SEVEN HAYSTACKS OF SUMMER

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Tony Carroll recommended this painting as a way to see how the artist painted light.

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WEEKEND 5 SEMESTER 2 EXIT BRIEF - THREE QUOTES ON THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN ART AND UTOPIA

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WEEKEND 5 SEMESTER 2 EXIT BRIEF - THREE QUOTES ON THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN ART AND UTOPIA

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WEEKEND 2 SEMESTER 2 CHRIS MARKER JUNKOPIA

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WEEKEND 2 SEMESTER 2 CHRIS MARKER JUNKOPIA

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I also watched Chris Marker’s Junkopia, a mesmerising 6 minute movie focusing on sculptures made of washed up junk in the Emeryville Mudflats,  outside San Francisco.

This film works on many levels, not least the  expansive shots of the mudflats, juxtaposed with closeups of the sculptures or parts of sculpture. But the main thing I noticed was the marriage film footage with the sound. No narrative was needed in Junkopia. Sounds and music gave atmosphere and meaning to each part of the movie. It made me think about how important the careful use of the right sounds/music will be in experimental video essay/short film making, and that this marriage can can tell the story on its own.

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WEEKEND 2 SEMESTER 2 Chris Marker documentary

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WEEKEND 2 SEMESTER 2 Chris Marker documentary

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I watched this  short 10 minute documentary focussing on the work of Chris Marker, in  particularly La Jetee. Speakers include Terry Gilliam, who did a remake work of his own based on La Jetee, entitled 12 monkeys. Gilliam spoke about the fact he had not seen the movie with English subtitles, but because of the  clever use of the stills with sound, it was possible for the story to tell itself so that the viewer could understand what was going on in the plot.

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WEEKEND 2 SEMESTER  2 Glenn Loughran Video Essay Brief Chris Marker La Jetee

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WEEKEND 2 SEMESTER  2 Glenn Loughran Video Essay Brief Chris Marker La Jetee

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This link came up on  Glenn's weekend presentation and the movie blew me away. I don’t know why I hadn’t seen it before. It’s got everything. Compelling story line, narrative like poetry, and amazing stills shots. I really like the idea of making a short movie just using photographs. I love that these are in black and white which strips bare all the images right to the point of the moment, so that they present an often startling view of the story line and its participants.

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Couldn't find a subbed version of this online, so I did my own. Translations from http://www.markertext.com/la_jetee.htm (edited for typos) Video from https://vimeo.com/31209852 Published under Section 107 of the U.S Copyright Act 1976 which permits for "fair use" in non-commercial circumstances. All rights belong to Argos Films.

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Weekend 2 Semester 2 Glenn Loughran Video Essay Brief  Tracey Emin Why I Never Became a Dancer 1995

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Weekend 2 Semester 2 Glenn Loughran Video Essay Brief  Tracey Emin Why I Never Became a Dancer 1995

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I think this is an absolutely brilliant example of a short video essay, simply told, with an extremely jubilant end. It really conveys the message Emin wants to send.

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Tracey EMIN: Why I Never Became a Dancer

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After the visit Jesse Jones supplied this comprehensive list of movie makers. From this I watched:

Tracey Emin:

Why I never became a Dancer. 1995

Shorts Collection

Banksy
Allora & Cadzadilla - watched all movies especially Allora 2017
This is a great resource to go back to time and again.

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The following films are presented for educational and non-commercial use only. All copyrights belong to the artists.

About UbuWeb Film & Video

UbuWeb is pleased to present thousands of avant-garde films & videos for your viewing pleasure. However, it is important to us that you realize that what you will see is in no way comparable to the experience of seeing these gems as they were intended to be seen: in a dark room, on a large screen, with a good sound system and, most importantly, with a roomful of warm, like-minded bodies.

However, we realize that the real thing isn't very easy to get to. Most of us don't live anywhere near theatres that show this kind of fare and very few of us can afford the hefty rental fees, not to mention the cumbersome equipment, to show these films. Thankfully, there is the internet which allows you to get a whiff of these films regardless of your geographical location.

We realize that the films we are presenting are of poor quality. It's not a bad thing; in fact, the best thing that can happen is that seeing a crummy shockwave file will make you want to make a trip to New York to the Anthology Film Archives or the Lux Cinema in London (or other places around the world showing similar fare). Next best case scenario will be that you will be enticed to purchase a high quality DVD from the noble folks trying to get these works out into the world. Believe me, they're not doing it for the money.

UbuWeb

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The following films are presented for educational and non-commercial use only. All copyrights belong to the artists. About UbuWeb Film & Video UbuWeb is pleased to present thousands of avant-garde films & videos for your viewing pleasure.

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This was shown in the gallery at IMMA and I absolutely loved it. I like the style of the imagery
and the Super 8 format.

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sloane square a room of ones own 1976 1080p FULL MOVIE

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WEEKEND 5 SEMESTER 2 Joseph Nechvatal Digital Painting artist

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WEEKEND 5 SEMESTER 2 Joseph Nechvatal Digital Painting artist

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I think this work is extremely topical, given our circumstances with Coronavirus! Nechvatal was first influenced by the effects of the HIV virus, then started to combine that biology with the technological aspects of computer viruses to make art. I find that a fascinating concept for creating digital paintings. Interview below tells more about his work.

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WEEKEND 5 SEMESTER 2 Joseph Nechvatal Interview on Anti-utopias.com

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WEEKEND 5 SEMESTER 2 Joseph Nechvatal Interview on Anti-utopias.com

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Week 2 Semester 2 Tony  Carroll painting weekend research

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Week 2 Semester 2 Tony  Carroll painting weekend research

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For weekend 2 of our second semester, we had a guest visit from lecturer Tony  Carroll. We were asked to use colour to represent mood, making paintings with no distinguishing marks or lines. We spent the weekend creating 'mood' paintings, colour mixing and then creating our own work using the same format but in whatever way we wanted to use it. I did the following research after the weekend.

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Week 2 Semester 2 Glenn Loughran Video Essay Brief Pascal Dombis The End-less

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Week 2 Semester 2 Glenn Loughran Video Essay Brief Pascal Dombis The End-less

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I found this work after I had done the video essay brief, but I've included it here because I really like the idea of projecting a video installation onto an outdoor building or perhaps a cliff face in a natural environment.  I also like the concept of this work which was made from the end clips of films over many decades of cinematography.

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WEEKEND 5 SEMESTER 2 Pascal Dombis The Invisible Generation

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WEEKEND 5 SEMESTER 2 Pascal Dombis The Invisible Generation

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I think this is a stunning piece of digital work really appropriate to our times

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WEEKEND 5 SEMESTER 2 Pascal Dombis Digital Artist 'Crackography'

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WEEKEND 5 SEMESTER 2 Pascal Dombis Digital Artist 'Crackography'

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This work by Pascal Dombis was created using the platform of Google to search for found images which were then layered one on top of the other. There's a video here showing the work close up and a description of it. Very interested in the concept behind this with the ethics  of the algorithms, data and artificial intelligence now collected by Google from our random searches.

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WEEKEND 5 SEMESTER 2 Alberto Seveso Digital Art/Photography

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WEEKEND 5 SEMESTER 2 Alberto Seveso Digital Art/Photography

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An article about Italian Digital designer and artist Alberto Seveso.Although he is a commercial digital designer, I love the variety of his work, some of which is shown in this article. I particular like the painterly effect works with the brushstrokes and the use of the human body as a canvas for digital imagery.

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This is a digital video art installation from Sarah Ludy. I like the immersive feel of the work in the whole room. Like the audience could be actually inside the work.

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An interview with James Gilliard and some of his other illustrations

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WEEKEND 5 SEMESTER 2 James Gilliard Digital Illustrator

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WEEKEND 5 SEMESTER 2 James Gilliard Digital Illustrator

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I really like this work from London artist James Gilliard. I like the vintage look combined with contemporary digital technique.

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Week 5 Semester 2 Sara Ludy Digital artist

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Week 5 Semester 2 Sara Ludy Digital artist

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Archival Digital Pigment on Belgian linen

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Week 5 Semester 2 Year 2 EXIT BRIEF -  Digital art research

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Week 5 Semester 2 Year 2 EXIT BRIEF -  Digital art research

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We were asked to research five examples of digital painting/painters. I started with this article. My research includes digital painting and video art.

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 WEEKEND 2 SEMESTER 2 Rosa Menkman Glitch video artist

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 WEEKEND 2 SEMESTER 2 Rosa Menkman Glitch video artist

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Rosa Menkman is a Dutch digital video artist. This work is from a decade ago and I think is hauntingly beautiful in its execution. This what I would think of as extremely intelligent video art that has a lot of research, questioning, curiosity and thought behind it. An amazing video essay for the modern day.

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Music and Video by Rosa Menkman

I recommend watching this with headphones (louder!)!
Full description is now available at the Rhizome Artbase  Here are some articles on The Collapse of PAL:
Life and Death of an Image by Domenico Quaranta in Fabio Paris Art Gallery - Solo show catalogue, 2010
Media Archaeology of Signals (Transmediale 2011) by Jussi Parikka in Cartographies of Media Archaeology, 2011
What is Media Archeology? by Jussi Parikka in University of California Press, 2012
Going beyond the Collapse of PAL in The Collapse of PAL by Rosa Menkman in Sunshine in my Throat, 2011. 
Motion Pictures by Dom Philips in Time Out Sao Paolo, 2011. 
INTERVIEW WITH ROSA MENKMAN, DUTCH VISUALIST by Andrew Rosinski in Dinca, 2010.

Render of part one of the Collapse of PAL (Eulogy, Obsequies and Requiem for the blue plains of phosphor). As performed at TV-TV on the 25th of May 2010, Copenhagen, DK, Copenhagen, DK. The video work is based on analogue signal, compressions, glitches and feedback artifacts in sound and video. For this part of the 30 minutes video, I used a NES, some image bending and a broken photo camera (CCD chip is loose) && for the sound I used a cracklebox, feedback, Eurosignal and a couple of DV-compressed videobends. 

In "The Collapse of PAL" (Eulogy, Obsequies and Requiem for the planes of blue phosphor), the Angel of History (as described by Walter Benjamin) reflects on the PAL signal and its termination. This death sentence, although executed in silence, was a brutally violent act that left PAL disregarded and obsolete. While it might be argued that the PAL signal is dead, it still exists as a trace left upon the new, ‘better’ digital technologies. PAL can, even though the technology is terminated, be found here as a historical form that newer technologies build upon, in- herit or have appropriated from. Besides this, the Angel also realizes that the new DVB signal that has been chosen over PAL is different, but at the same time also inherently flawed as PAL. 

In memory of PAL. 
Shout outs to Secam and NTSC!

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Face to Face - Derek Jarman documentary 

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Face to Face - Derek Jarman documentary 

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I watched a few documentaries on Jarman. This was one.

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There We Are John - Derek Jarman Documentary

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There We Are John - Derek Jarman Documentary

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Documentary on Derek Jarman, made towards the end of his life. Very difficult to watch because it was made not long before Jarman died. His vision was impaired  and it was possible to see the toll the HIV virus was taking on his sight, speech and brain. Nevertheless, he still maintains a wonderful command of the English language an was able to vocalize clearly, if a little more slowly than he would have done previously.

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There We Are John - A Portrait of Derek Jarman

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Link to Guardian article featuring British costume designer Sandy Powell, who encouraged celebrities at the Bafta Awards in February 2020 ceremony to sign her suit, so she could auction it to raise funds to help save Derek Jarman's former home Prospect Cottage in Dungeoness

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When the Oscar-winning British costume designer Sandy Powell found herself with a Bafta nomination for The Irishman, she thought: "What on earth am I going to wear?"

What she ended up creating was not just a unique walking work of art, but also a way of helping preserve the former home of her mentor and close friend, Derek Jarman, the late film-maker, artist and LGBTQ+ activist.

In keeping with the Bafta theme of sustainable fashion, Powell chose to hit the red carpet in a cream suit toile - a calico template from an earlier designer suit. Powell, a three-time Oscars and Baftas winner, said: "Then I thought: 'It's like a blank canvas. I could go armed with a pen, and get signatures. And maybe we could auction it."
'A toolbox for his work': fundraiser launched to save Derek Jarman's home
And so it was that she dreamed up a way to help save Prospect Cottage, Jarman's home on the windswept shore of Dungeness, Kent, which he had transformed from a Victorian fisherman's hut and from where he created some of his best work.

Powell strode forth among A-list celebrities at the London Critics' Circle and Bafta awards to secure the signatures of more than 100 Hollywood stars and luminaries from the film and theatre industry.

"I think I've done pretty well. I've got Robert de Niro, Al Pacino, Joaquin Phoenix, Scarlett Johansson, Renée Zellweger, Laura Dern ... I've got all the winners, so far," she said. "But I need to get Brad Pitt and Leonardo DiCaprio. There are a few big names missing."

So this weekend, she and the suit will head across the Atlantic to the Oscars. "I won't wear it to the ceremony itself, but maybe to one of the parties. But I definitely want to get Martin Scorsese, who has agreed to do it," she said.

Some parts of the anatomy are less signature-friendly than others. Richard E Grant had to kneel down on the red carpet to add his name, while Gwendoline Christie found herself signing Powell's inner leg.

"I was quite choosy about who signed where," said Powell, who has won Oscars for Shakespeare in Love, The Aviator and The Young Victoria.

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Powell with Richard E Grant.

The result is a unique piece to be auctioned through the Art Fund charity, which is trying to raise £3.5m in 10 weeks to save Prospect Cottage and its stunning garden. Expressions of interest can be registered at development@artfund.org with details of the auction still to be announced.

"It's not just important as a piece of history, but also to preserve his legacy," said Powell, who became close friends with Jarman after he hired her to work on Caravaggio. "It is so important Derek doesn't get forgotten, and that he can continue to inspire young film-makers, artists and writers."

Jarman moved to the cottage in 1986, turning it into an artwork in its own right, filling the garden with sculptures made from flotsam and jetsam. After his death in 1994, it was cared for and maintained by his long-time companion Keith Collins, who died in 2018.

The artist Tacita Dean and actor Tilda Swinton approached the Art Fund to come to the rescue. The £3.5m is needed to purchase, preserve and maintain the property as a place for artist residencies and public access. Creative Folkestone, an arts charity, will manage and maintain it. Jarman's archive of documents and artefacts will also be available to the public at Tate Britain.

Art Fund spokeswoman Rachel Mapplebeck said: "Derek Jarman's Prospect Cottage is really a work of art in its entirety. The cottage is full of works of art by him and his friends. There are props from film sets. It's surrounded by this incredible garden, which he created from the shingle beach."

Half of the £3.5m has been raised by private donors. The remainder is being crowdfunded through the Art Fund website, with many artists offering rewards in exchange for donations.

Powell "hasn't the faintest idea" how much her suit could raise. But she said: "It would be nice if it ended up in a museum, or somewhere where other people could see it."
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Sandy Powell's Bafta suit raises funds to save Derek Jarman's cottage

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When the Oscar-winning British costume designer Sandy Powell found herself with a Bafta nomination for The Irishman, she thought: "What on earth am I going to wear?" What she ended up creating was not just a unique walking work of art, but also a way of helping preserve the former home of her mentor and close friend, Derek Jarman, the late film-maker, artist and LGBTQ+ activist.

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Link to 'This Is Indecent' Guardian article by film maker Alex Cox,  writing about the life and legacy of Derek Jarman

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I met Derek Jarman only once, at a film festival. It was a dreadful affair, as these things usually are, where the film-makers are plied with cheap drink and shuffled from screenings to interviews to dinner in a dire cafe, followed by bed in the B&B "where Barry Humphries stayed, and he didn't complain".

Jarman had done this more than I had, and certainly had every reason to act bored, or shirty, or distant. But he didn't. Unlike all the other directors I've met - including me - he wasn't annoyed or paranoid. Instead, he seemed entirely serene. We had a drink and a chat over a grisly kebab, and after we parted I remember thinking what a nice chap he was. I've thought of him since, when festivals or screenings got especially tedious; remembered how effortlessly good-humoured he had seemed.

But films aren't judged by the niceness of their creators. An artist's work should be open to consideration, and reconsideration, at any time. In the case of Jarman this is pretty easy, since, unlike many directors, he was the principal author of his films. So the question is whether Jarman was an auteur whom we should continue to value. And that involves considering his body of work.

Jarman's oeuvre is unique, though that doesn't necessarily make it good. He began his artistic career as a painter, studying at the Slade Art School in the 1960s, and worked as a costume designer for the Royal Ballet and English National Opera. Apparently, the poor reception that was given to his designs for a production of Don Giovanni in 1968 drove him from high art into film.

It was Jarman's film work that most of us saw first - not as a director, but as a production designer for Ken Russell. Jarman produced the sets for two of Russell's most successful and distinctive films, The Devils and Savage Messiah. I would suggest that this work alone gives Jarman a significant place in the annals of British cinema. Savage Messiah is a fine Russell film, and Jarman's designs complement it perfectly. It is his work for The Devils that is unusual and exemplary.

The Devils benefited from a big budget at a time when the American studios were investing in British films. Other directors, such as Lindsay Anderson with O Lucky Man! and Jack Gold with The Reckoning, benefited from this early-1970s Hollywood largesse, yet their films remained relatively naturalistic in their look. Only Jarman - collaborating with an unusually talented and ambitious mentor, Russell - gave us our epic money's worth. I can't think of any other British film that has had such massive, purpose-built sets, such awesome visual ambition.

If Jarman had remained a production designer, he might have had the career trajectory of a Ken Adam or a John Beard. Or he might not. Despite his brilliance, there is no evidence that the multinational movie machine would have warmed to him. Studio film-making is first and foremost about control: directors and designers are replaceable elements. Russell and Jarman were not. In that sense, it was perhaps inevitable that Jarman would start making his own films. He made no fewer than 16 shorts in five years, and in 1976 he made his first feature, Sebastiane.

I went to see Sebastiane when it first came out for two reasons: it was the first feature film to be made in Latin, which I thought might be amusing, and it was reportedly the first film passed by the British Board of Film Censors that depicted an erect penis. Sebastiane satisfied on both counts. Maybe it was a bit slow, but it had some good jokes, and wasn't afraid of dealing with the sadistic aspect of male eroticism. Jarman seemed to be carving out a space for himself as the gay Russell, I thought - though there was more to him than that, as we would see.

Over dinner at that film festival, years later, I asked Jarman how he had got the boner past the censor. "We hid it!" he said mischievously. "We shot the film in Academy [the 4x3 screen ratio of older films], but showed it to the censors with a widescreen mask on the projector. Sebastiane's hard-on was hidden below the frame-line, and they passed the film uncut. When we projected it in 4x3, the hard-on was still there!"

Still later, I asked the late film censor, James Ferman, about this story. He denied it. "We always screen our prints without a mask, so as to prevent such surprises," he said. But I didn't believe him. There was no way the BBFC was going to let a hard-on slip out in 1976. Jarman had played a trick on the censors - and won quite an important battle for artistic freedom at the same time.

A series of features followed, including Jubilee (1977), The Tempest (1979), Caravaggio (1986), The Last of England (1987), Edward II (1991), Wittgenstein (1992) and Blue (1993). These were interspersed with shorts, videos, painting, acting, gardening and books. Naturally, Aids informed his work after he was diagnosed with the virus: his last feature, Blue, was made after its complications had made him blind.

Jarman worked in many fields, and made a number of features in a comparatively short time. So were these films good? As a body of work, do they endure? Has Jarman had an influence on other film-makers, on the medium?

He certainly had an influence on me. When I was preparing to shoot Walker in Nicaragua in the mid-1980s, we came under pressure from the studio to remove the anachronisms that peppered the script, and that were intended to point up the political message of the historical story. One of my defences was that movies had progressed from the days of kitchen-sink naturalism: as evidence I could cite a recent Russian film about Stalin, called Repentance, and Jarman's latest work, Caravaggio.

At the time, it looked as if as film-makers were managing to break down the walls of naturalism, just as Jarman had exploded the walls of Loudon in The Devils. It seemed, for a brief moment there in the 1980s, as if we might be able to introduce a Brechtian dimension to increasingly straitjacketed storytelling forms.

We didn't succeed, of course. The well-made film, which looks nice and doesn't confuse people, and makes a clear distinction between "historical" and "contemporary" subjects, has triumphed. Other forms are shut out; other voices are drowned. But for how long? And does the fact that Jarman's genre-busting didn't become widespread mean that he was wrong, or that he was ahead of his time?

Blue was Jarman's final film, made as he was dying. It features no images, just a blue screen. It is an exercise in sound design. When I read about Blue I remember crossing it off my mental list, suspecting it would be a pointless experiment.

But then I had an interesting experience. Tony Richardson's famously popular Tom Jones was on the BBC, and I stayed in to watch it, remembering how much I had enjoyed it years ago. But it was difficult to enjoy after the passage of 30 years. Its humour seemed obvious, its acting crass, its frenetic pace laboured and unoriginal.

So I switched stations and found that Channel 4 was playing Blue. I watched, or should I say listened. I was intrigued, not by the lack of pictures but by the richness and variety of its soundtrack. The absence of the visual seemed to have liberated Jarman just as the rich camerawork and rapid cutting of Tom Jones had weighed Richardson down. Blue is as complicated and demanding a film as one could wish for. I stayed with it, fascinated by all that I was hearing, until the end.

How likely would a sightless film-maker be to find a budget for a feature today? I doubt they'd have a cat's chance in hell. That doesn't tell us anything about Jarman - but it does say something about the filmic environment, and the narrowing of our creative options.

The producer Don Boyd wrote a couple of years after Jarman's death that "we all love Derek now" - contrasting the esteem in which he was posthumously held with Jarman's struggle for allies, and for funding, throughout his life. Jarman wasn't slow to give a bollocking to people he wasn't pleased with; this, too, is a diminishing trend among film-makers who live in fear of biting the hand that throws them scraps. He despised one gay actor for coming out late, and for accepting a gong from the Thatcher government. And he loathed Robert Mapplethorpe, the money-hungry gay photographer who died in a frenzy of autographing copies of his work.

One of Mapplethorpe's biographers tells a story of Jarman and Mapplethorpe meeting in Heaven (the London disco, not the paradise). Jarman was going down one staircase, Mapplethorpe ascending another, and Mapplethorpe called out: "I have everything I want, Derek! Have you got everything you want?" In money terms, Jarman didn't. What independent film director does?

Mapplethorpe died leaving an estate worth more than $200m. Jarman's estate consisted of a fisherman's hut in Dungeness, some flowerbeds and some films. But they are films that still have power to intrigue and fascinate. They are bold assaults on "decent" film-making; molotovs hurled at the dull beige skein of naturalism that enfolds and suffocates us now.

· www.alexcox.com. A Derek Jarman day is being held at the ICA, London SW1, on Sunday. Box office: 020-7930 3647.
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I met Derek Jarman only once, at a film festival. It was a dreadful affair, as these things usually are, where the film-makers are plied with cheap drink and shuffled from screenings to interviews to dinner in a dire cafe, followed by bed in the B&B "where Barry Humphries stayed, and he didn't complain".

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WEEKEND 1 SEMESTER 2 VISIT TO IMMA DUBLIN FOR DEREK JARMAN  EXHIBITION

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WEEKEND 1 SEMESTER 2 VISIT TO IMMA DUBLIN FOR DEREK JARMAN  EXHIBITION

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Our first weekend of the second semester was cancelled on the island, due to the community hallbeing used for voting in the general election. So some of the class went to IMMA in Dublin on Sunday 10th February to see the Derek Jarman exhibition. A fascinating retrospective,  charting Jarman's career from entrance to Slade School of Art and through his film making days. Research made after the visit follows.