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4/18/22

Tara Donovan is an American sculptor based out of New York. she is known for large scale installations using thousands of individual household objects. When combined together, the many parts create a new, often massive form with very interesting texture and organic contour. By accumulating all these objects together, Donovan re-contextualizes them and gives them a new purpose all together. Most viewers would not consider the aesthetic quality of a plastic cup or paper note card, partly because we don't usually consider what they would look like on a massive scale. One of the things that strikes me about these works is that you wouldn't realize what they were made of until you got up close to them. There is a macro version of the piece; the huge unified form. When you get closer there is also a micro element: the individual pieces creating a unique surface to the greater whole. Donovan's works often dominate the rooms they are installed in, which diffuses the light in the area and transforms the atmosphere. These gallery spaces feel dominated by the pieces, like they are not just a room, but a habitat for these works to inhabit. her work makes me consider the use of common objects in art a lot more. It's amazing what small items can coalesce into on a large scale.

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4/28/22

Marcel Broodthaers (1924-1976) was a Belgian filmmaker, poet and visual artist. He is known for surrealist sculpture with a otherworldly sort of energy. Many of his works take many many pieces of an object and compile them together in a repeating fashion. This creates a lot of overlapping patterns and repetition in his work that give the viewer a lot of visual information to digest upon first glance. many of his sculptural pieces use small broken white eggshells as a primary component, where he piles them up or packs them close together. They are all very fragile, and it's rare to see so many intact in one place. To me it makes me consider what creatures have left those eggshells, and that there must be a lot of them crawling around somewhere. Broodthaers work is simple in a way that I appreciate as a viewer. It doesn't say anything overt or obvious, but instead invites you to create your own meaning and come to your own conclusions about what the work means to you. I feel like in some of my work I am trying to consider the message of my pieces too much, when it may be just as effective to make them somewhat vague and nebulous. As I've said, I think the interpretation of the viewer and the intention of the artist are both valid and important.

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4/28/22

Keith Haring (1958-1990) was an American pop artist who gained notoriety in the 1980s. He is credited as one of the trailblazers in street art in the epicenter of the movement (New York). His cartoony art style with bright colors and thick outlines is one of the more iconic styles of the 20th century. Harings work often addressed social and political issues of the time, especially LGBT rights and the AIDS epidemic. He first gained notoriety for painting and doing chalk art on the walls of New York subways, when graffiti as a genre was gaining traction in the art world. He uses line in a very distinctive and visually pleasing way, with the weight of his lines remaining consistent all throughout a single piece. The use of bright color contrasted with dark black lines gives these works a very bright and joyful feeling. They are low detail with simplistic figures and subject matter, which makes them very easy to read visually. Haring's art has always impressed me as an illustrator. I believed that the more involved and detailed your work was, the better, but obviously that's not always true. Differing levels of detail should be applied to different situations. Haring's art affects the soul in a way that is just as valid as any other painter. it makes me very happy to see the world embrace his work in the way that it does.

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4/19/22

Antony Gormley (1950) is a British sculptor known for public installations. Many of his works use the shape of the human body in one way or another. Most are full-body structures, some at realistic scale with others being much larger. He makes use of metal rods and chunks crossed over to create a rough outline of a human body. In some ways they are very abstract and low-detail, but still very recognizable as the human form. Gormley plays on the viewers ability to recognize the shape of another person. Even though the forms don't have much individuality, we still understand quickly that they are supposed to be people. In some ways, there is no form we can relate to and understand more. The hollowness of them suggests a ghost or dream-like entity. There is an undeniable presence, but not necessarily a conscious one. In them we see ourselves, because the bodies are like the ones we have. There is something about the human form that resonates in us. We are subconsciously trained to spot members of our species, both as a survival reflex and because we're surrounding by the bodies of others. To me they seem friendly, if not a bit aloof. Even without faces or distinct features, Gormley evokes the presence of a person. This is a concept I'm very interested in exploring in my own art, mostly because I'm curious to see the ways in which the human mind reacts to different bodies.

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4/19/22

Joseph Havel is a postmodernist American artist born in 1954. He's known for casting household objects like shoes and curtains in metal or resin. These objects are often decontextualized from their original purpose and gathered together to create abstract forms. One might not recognize the objects on first glance, as the surface texture is usually intensely altered. He invites the viewer to consider the form of the objects without being distracted by their original purpose. for the most part, these objects are simplified in their color and presentation. They are mundane objects that most people would not think about in an artistic context. Havel takes the function of these items away, and makes us see them as nothing more than objects. To me, this feels like a practice in presence of mind. We tend to overlook all the art around us on a day to day basis, but in reality all the items we surround ourselves with are designed with some kind of aesthetic in mind. Even things that are almost purely for a functional purpose, like books, have a beauty about them that we are not often invited to think too closely about. This gives me something of a new respect for "ready-made" art and things that I have in my home that are, for all intents and purposes; art.

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4/14/22

Armand was a French-born American artist best known for deconstruction and reassembling of objects into new amalgamations. He went from painting to using the paintbrushes themselves in his work. These sculptures are often busy and cluttered, while still maintaining some kind of pattern. In the "untitled" example below, we can see a bike disassembled and reassembled underneath a mass of dried paint and brushes. The form is definitely not obvious, and we only really see it when we stand back and observe the piece from a distance. Up close you may not see it at all. These works exemplify the idea of "order in chaos". Despite all the items being thrown together on a relatively flat plane, they have some semblance of pattern. It's something that you don't really notice unless you're paying careful attention, or you spend a good amount of time with the piece. There is a sense of balance and unity despite this chaos, and that's a line that Armand treads masterfully in his works. It's easy to see a pile of stuff, but he makes you work a little harder to find the hidden forms within. I think this is a cool way to use found objects, by using them to create patterns on a large scale, while leaving them otherwise unaltered.

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4/14/22

Thomas Schutte (1954) is a German contemporary artist specializing in illustration, sculpture and architecture. He is known for pieces like the ones pictured below. They take aspects of the human form and mold or melt them into inhuman shapes. many of his works look like alien creatures or strange perversions of human beings. He works in fired ceramics, wax, aluminum and other mixed-mediums. Nearly all of his sculptural work revolves around the idea of the human form, but do more than simply portray the body. The faces of his sculptures are very naturalistic and have a lot of personality. They have a high level of deformity that makes them more akin to aliens than human, but with undeniably human qualities. Certain aspects of the face might be molded in an odd way, or accentuated. I find some of Schutte's sculptures to be a bit unsettling. They don't quite dwell in the uncanny valley, but they're somewhere near that point. If any of these statues moved for whatever reason, they would be somewhat terrifying. It's interesting that we are (at least I am) scared by things that are nearly human, but not exactly. It's almost like it's something my brain has a hard time conceptualizing. I can't help but feel like these creatures are dangerous in some way. It's worth considering while constructing pieces that deal with the human body.

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3/31/22

Takashi Murakami is a Japanese painter and sculptor born in 1962. He's most well known for strikingly colorful cartoony imagery that plays on the ideas of Japanese pop culture. This style, called "Superflat" was introduced and coined by Murakami. It uses the ideas, style and aesthetic of Japanese manga and anime, with flatly rendered characters and bright colors. Murakami is specifically well known for his paintings of smiling colorful flowers in this genre. The major point of Superflat is to take a "low-brow" art style and re-contextualize it as high art. Murakami has been extremely successful in this endeavor, with many high profile exhibitions and worldwide acclaim. Another thing he does to further push the meaning of his work is repackage and sell recreations of his pieces in for forms of affordable merchandise. This way he is returning the art from high to low brow, showing that the concept itself doesn't make a lot of sense. Why do people value certain kinds of art more than others? What makes high art special? These are the questions Murakami has sought to ask with Superflat. It reminds me in some ways of Warhol, at least in the ways that he reintroduces familiar images to the public in a different context. Out of the conceptual art we've studied, this seems particularly critical of the art world itself, and I like that a lot.

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3/16/22

Kara Walker is an American artist based out of Atlanta. She is known best for her black and white simple silhouettes which often portray stylized stories of racial oppression, gender and human sexuality. These works have a very strong sense of form, with clean black shapes on a white background (or vice versa). The backgrounds of these works are often lit up, further emphasizing the forms and showing them in greater clarity. Walker also works in large scale paintings, often monotone, which examine many of the same themes. In much of her art, she uses a somewhat cartoony, stylized form of the human body. This gives these works a kind of fairytale feeling, like they are adjacent top reality, but not quite realistic. This serves to make a commentary on the human condition, most often the historical struggles of black Americans. The style is easy to read visually, giving the message or Walker's work a much more visceral feeling to behold it. With this style, she is able to paint a strange and sometimes otherworldly reality, which still retains a grounded and human quality. I like this style specifically because it plays on the human love of storytelling. Walker's silhouettes are dripping with emotion and personality, despite their simplicity. It's easy to see a scene unfolding in her pieces, and feels like reading a storybook for adults. Her work strives to create a sense of humanity, which walks the line between fantasy and a brutal reality.

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Go To Hell or Atlanta, Whichever Comes First, 2015

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Andy Goldsworthy is an English sculptor known for creating abstract displays in nature. He uses only natural materials in the surrounding area to create his works, which usually accentuate whatever object they are applied to. He puts a great deal of emphasis on color, by picking very bright objects like flower petals or clean rocks to create contrast against the grey or dull background of dirt and stone. Instead of introducing new materials, Goldsworthy puts the colors already present in nature on full display. He uses a lot of symmetry and perfect lines to create his works, which is part of why they stand out so intensely in their environments. We don't expect to see such perfect shapes in nature, so Goldsworthy's pieces tend to capture our attention. Because the materials are all natural however, the works do not feel out of place. They all have a human element, but do not otherwise clash with the outdoor environment. If nothing else, his works feel like stumbling upon a tree or stairwell that is sacred to the local fairies. To me at least, there is a distinctly magic feeling to all his pieces. In my own work, I would love to create something site-specific like this using only the materials around that spot. It seems like it would be very meditative.

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Poppies in flower after heavy rain collected from fields and laid on steps,  2014 

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Sycamore leaves edging the roots of a sycamore tree, 2013

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3/1/22

Hirst is known for monumental sculpture with biological imagery and themes. He tends to depict the layers of a "living" creature in a very sterile fashion, with peeled back skin to reveal layers of muscle or perfect dissections one might expect to see in a medical journal. Sometimes they are color-accurate (to an extent) like in "Myth", but do not appear gorey or especially unsettling. Instead they are presented in a clean, nearly scientific manor. I enjoy this style in the case of "Myth" especially. Unicorns are often portrayed as a mythical, fantastical legend that is only known to humans on a storybook level. By showing the musculature of a unicorn, it is bringing it back to earth. It re-contextualizes the creature as something we can understand and relate to living animals that we have studied. The fact that the sculpture is life-size and proportionate reinforces this idea. Never have I seen a depiction of a fantasy creature that feels so real. I feel for a moment that I live on a planet where these creatures exist, and I am looking at a scientific diagram of one. I think this concept would be really interesting if it were applied to a different creature, perhaps one that doesn't have an easily reference-able living counterpart (horse). You would have to invent what the inside would look like, but if it was presented like "Myth", it would read as though the creature is real. More than anything, this is what draws me to Hirst's work.

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2/9/22

McCarthy is an American sculptor born in Salt Lake City in 1945. Many of his works are off a very large scale and are on display in public spaces, which he uses to his advantage in terms of subject matter. Conceptually, many of his works seem to be a criticism of purity and "polite society". We see him using the location of his installations to his advantage as far as conveying a message goes. Works like "Tree" and "Complex Pile" (previously "Complex Shit"), are meant to illicit a visceral reaction from the audience. They might make the viewer feel grossed out or uncomfortable, playing on the things that humans find intrinsically nasty, like poop. This shock value is doubled by the absolutely massive and undeniable presence of the pieces. They are difficult to ignore, making the reaction you have to them harder to shake. It's interesting to think that the location of the installation plays such a large role in how it's received by the public. I think this relationship between audience and artwork is spectacular. Instead of inviting a person to consider the art, it forces them too. Sometimes there's nothing more you want your art to do than scream "Look at me, feel something!". Like Koons, McCarthy extorts scale to a comedic point (and happens to use inflatables). The message a piece conveys is changed drastically by the scale. There's often a level of hilarity in McCarthy's work due to it's size and location; both things to consider going forward as an artist.

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2/24/22

With an incredible command of paper material, Jospin creates dense sculpture that give the illusion of depth. All of the shown work is created from cardboard and paste, with many layers stacked on top of one another and carved away. The result is dense forms with a lot of little details. The texture of the material lends itself to the portrayal of trees, which look like they have a natural, rough outer bark. The contrast in depth means that some parts of the forest pieces appear deeper and darker. The light cannot hit the most recessed cavities, which makes them appear like dark voids where the forest might continue past our vision. This contributes very nicely to the illusion that there is actually a forest packed into this square, and its much deeper and denser than it actually is. I'm growing to be a big fan of these types of works. I've learned that I enjoy pieces that make me feel a certain way, perhaps inspiring a sense of adventure or reminding me of something else. These forests inspire a sense of wonder in me, I want to step into them and explore. At the same time, the monotone browns of cardboard give them a slightly nightmarish and otherworldly quality that is unsettling. Either way they feel real, and trick me into thinking I'm on the edge of a strange woods. Having worked in theater, this reminds me of really good set design. Imagine watching a play where the forest behind actually looked like it disappeared into darkness. I aspire to create that feeling in an audience.

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1/13/22

Felix Gonzalez-Torres was an Cuban-born American sculpture/installation artist. He is likely known best for simplistic site-specific displays of candy piles, that of which the audience was invited to participate with. After seeing the exhibit at BAM I was really interested to see what else Gonzalez-Torres has done in his career (and was immediately saddened to find that he has passed away).  I wanted to touch further on a concept I brushed over in my artist exploration paper, and the reason Gonzalez-Torres is my favorite conceptual artist I've ever come in contact with. This is a personal opinion, but I believe the best conceptual art has something to say about art and the institution itself (it's already in the perfect context to do so). The fleeting nature of the candy piles goes against the rules and standards of many galleries that they are displayed in. My inviting the audience to remove parts of the installation, thereby ruining the original form and not bothering with preciousness, it's beautiful to me. I have not really ever been able to interact with a piece in this way, and I felt very connected to the art itself. I felt as though I wasn't just a passive viewer, but a proponent of the art itself. I have a new respect for conceptual art after seeing this exhibit. Whether it makes me want to participate, I don't know, but I'm inspired to create pieces like this more in future assignments.

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"Untitled" (Para Un Hombre En Uniforme), 1991

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"Untitled" (Portrait of Ross in L.A.), 1991

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2/8/2022

Jeff Koons is an American artist notable for metal sculpture with bright, playful themes. The examples here show his fascination with balloon-like forms that have big bubbly shapes despite being made of light metal. These works (like "Balloon Swan) look like they would be made of a light plastic or would be buoyant to the touch, but would be cold and hard. The massive scale of the work serves a sense of comedy. One wouldn't expect a balloon animal to be quite so big, so it inspires feelings of whimsy and fantasy to see it at this size. Some of his works explore actual inflatable sculptures, like "Inflatable Flower". These look bright, oversized and stylized, and almost feel like a cartoon come to life. Koons is a master at material illusion. The way he makes one material, like metal, to look like latex or plastic is very interesting. If I was able to at any point in my attendance of this class play with this idea, I would love to pull something like this off. Obviously I will be limited in the materials I will be able to work with, I would be curious to see if I could pull this off in any feasible way. Either way this artist has really inspired me as to what sculpture could be beyond the traditional methods.

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"Inflatable Flower (Tall Orange) Corner" 1979

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2/1/22

Belanger primarily works in stoneware and depicts common objects and body parts disembodied and infused with one another. She uses a pastel color pallet with a lot of pinks. This gives her work a light, dreamy feeling with feminine undertones. The lack of saturation seems to a conscious choice, and it lends itself to the softness of the overall theme. The texture of the pieces are smooth and without blemishes. The paint has no gloss or sheen, it captures light and gives a nice matte finish. The subject matter also has distinctly American, specifically with food. The pie and banana split give me 50s Americana vibes. I have not really considered doing representational sculpture before, perhaps because most of what I see is very stylized or abstract. I really enjoy the stylization of Belanger's work. It's all very recognizable, but with straight perfect edges that makes it feel slightly otherworldly. It feels like a 60s art deco illustration come to life. Although this is a difficult medium to work with without the proper equipment, I would like to explore more ceramics in my artistic career.  It feels like such a primal human art form that I'm inclined to try it.

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2/1/22

An abstract sculptor with an emphasis on form and texture. Benglis uses a wide variety of materials including metals, polyurethane and wax. She creates large forms that dominate the spaces they are displayed in, like "Quartered Meteor". To me, these pieces feel alive, like bit undulating alien blobs. They seem like they would move if you touched them, and yet they are all solidified. Benglis focuses significantly on texture in her sculpted works. Much of her work presents a medium in it's natural state, without much sculpting or editing of the final product. Whatever a piece is made of, it definitely retains it's quality. Be it shiny and rough edged metal chunks or dried piles of previously wet plastic, the medium is showcases with all the properties you would expect of it. I would be curious to explore these concepts in my own art, as I've often felt like the material I'm using to make a piece is very interesting on it's own. There is something to be said about working a material into a desired shape, but I also like the idea of thoughtfully presenting a substance as it is. As long as humans appreciate the intrinsic values and aesthetics of an item, there really isn't much more to be done with it. This, at least, is the message I take away from Benglis's artworks.

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1/26/22

Botero creates massive outdoor sculptures out of bronze. They are generally used as decoration for public spaces, meaning they are in close proximity to people and exposed to the elements (creating a weathered look over time). Botero is known for distorting his figures, both human and animal, in a very distinct way. They are rotund and smooth looking, with squat proportions and bulbous features. Such interesting shapes immediately capture the attention of the viewer. While they do represent animals (organic), they do have an otherworldly kind of feel. I think this can be partially attributed to the perfect vertical symmetry of many of these pieces. You wouldn't expect an actual life-like animal to be so perfectly centered, but each is still recognizable as being and animal or man or what have you. I'm a really big fan of interesting stylization like Botero's works. In my eyes, the ability to sculpt a recognizable object AND add a personal style to it is the pinnacle of 3 dimensional art. There is a difference between distorting perspective and creating a fantastical being on a 2D plane, and realizing it in full sculpture. It's much more difficult to get the anatomy to visually appealing point, not to mention a command of your materials to begin doing so. This is probably what I appreciate most about Botero's work.

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1/20/22

Schneider is a sculptor with a background in architecture and marine biology. Both of these fields heavily influence the concepts and themes present in his work. Schneider creates small landscapes out of found materials (trash). One of the more interesting forms of sculpture I've seen can be found here. Both "Genesis" and "Lady Marlene" use fish tanks to hold the rest of the sculpture. They both contain live fish that navigate make their homes in the piles. This incorporation o living animals gives the pieces an extra level of intrigue in my opinion. I like the idea of watching an animal explore an art piece. Think about how different the fish's perspective of the sculpture is compared to mine. As far as the concept of his work goes, this gives the viewer much more to ponder while peering into one of the tanks. Aside from the fishtanks, Schneider creates strange and uncanny little landscapes that tickle the imagination. By re-contextualizing found objects, he is able to create scenes that are more than a sum of their parts. Instead of seeing a pile of trash (which is accurate to what it actually is), the human mind fills in the gaps and sees a strange forest, to the point where you might wonder what lives there. I really like this idea of setting a scene, be it with trash or otherwise. These are the kind's of sculptures that I personally would spend a lot of time looking over if I saw them in person.

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1/17/22

As seen with this body of examples, Smith creates perversions of the human form that come across as gorey and/or unsettling. This is what initially drew me to her work, as the shock value and oddness is very interesting to me. Smith's sculptures are examples of body horror; the idea showing the human body in grotesque and unnatural ways to inspire unease in the viewer.  Her use of color plays into this. In "Untitled", the usage of red and waxy looking materials reminds the viewer of meat and blood. These are things that stir a psychological response in the audience the same way horror movies do. We see our own bodies reflected in these pieces, and it even though we know it's a fabrication of a body, we still feel emotionally attached to it in a way. I think playing on human empathy like this is very interesting and a different way of considering the audience-art relationship. We probably wouldn't feel (quite) as unsettled if these bodies alluded to animals or non-human creatures. Because we feel that personal connection, and we have bodies ourselves, seeing them in a state of disarray is somewhat scary. Smith sticks to very organic forms and chooses materials that support that decision. I think horror is a difficult field to capture perfectly, especially in sculpture. The material choice would do a lot to mess with the psyche of the individual viewer. Even if the sculpture isn't made of meat or some kind of inky black stone or waxy mummy skin, it still plausibly looks like it could be. This is all the viewer needs to suspend disbelief and make them feel weirded out. This is a great example of why material choice can say just as much if not more than the subject matter depicted.