The little painting is one of my early exercises with color. I’ve been thinking a lot about what colors compliment each other. How can I make images jump off of a canvas?

Above: Michael and Lily

Below: Scale Shot: Annie (right)

“I’ve gone from saint to whore and back to saint again, all in one lifetime.”– Ingrid Bergman

“I don’t want to dress up a picture with just my face” –Grace Kelly

“I think the quality of sexiness comes from within. It is something that is in you or it isn’t and it really doesn’t have much to do with breasts or thighs or the pout of your lips…You have to be born a sex symbol. You don’t become one. If you’re born with it, you’ll have it even when you’re 100 years old.” –Sophia Loren

“In a world ordered by sexual imbalance, pleasure in looking has been split between active/male and passive/female. The determining male gaze projects its phantasy on to the female form which is styled accordingly. In their traditional exhibitionist role women are simultaneously looked at and displayed, with their appearance coded for strong visual and erotic impact so that they can be said to connote to-be-looked-at-ness. Woman displayed as sexual object is the leit-motif of erotic spectacle: from pin-ups to striptease, from Ziegfeld to Busby Berkeley, she holds the look, plays to and signifies male desire. Mainstream film neatly combined spectacle and narrative…The presence of woman is an indispensable element of spectacle in normal narrative film,  yet her visual presence tends to work against the development of a story line, to freeze the flow of action in moments of erotic contemplation. This alien presence then has to be integrated into cohesion with the narrative…A male movie star’s glamorous characteristics are thus not those of the erotic object of the gaze, but those of the more perfect, more complete, more powerful ideal ego conceived in the original moment of recognition in front of the mirror. The character in the story can make things happen and control events better than the subject/spectator, just as the image in the mirror was more in control of motor coordination. In contrast to woman as icon, the active male figure (the ego ideal of the identification process) demands a three-dimensional space corresponding to that of the mirror-recognition in which the alienated subject internalised his own representation of this imaginary existence. He is a figure in a landscape…Women, whose image has continually been stolen and used for this end, cannot view the decline of the traditional film form with anything much more than sentimental regret.” –Laura Mulvey

“‘But I never looked like that!’ – How do you know? What is the ‘you’ you might or might not look like? Where do you find it – by which morphological or expressive calibration? Where is your authentic body? You are the only one who can never see yourself except as an image; you never see your eyes unless they are dulled by the gaze they rest upon the mirror or the lens (I am interested in seeing my eyes only when they look at you): even and especially for your own body, you are condemned to the repertoire of its images.” –Roland Barthes

http://inbflat.net/

website with more pictures: http://ahboon.net/2007/07/19/condom-fashion-show-in-china/

“Cookware cityscape”…

Then there’s this women who I met at a a crafts fair in Israel, twice actually, who makes things from plastic bags.  It seems like pretty standard recycling, but she puts together bags with all different themes and jokes…

I don’t remember what this piece was called, but it was on display at the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington, DC a couple of years ago. As you can see, it uses many items most people would consider junk and transforms them into something much more interesting and magnificent.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biogas

No title, 1968: glass and metal case containing six objects

Top: A: latex, metal-screen, pins B: latex, cloth-tape.

Middle: C: latex, mesh, rubber, D: latex, cotton, rubber

Bottom: E: latex F: latex, plaster

Eva Hesse (1936-1970) was a German-born American sculptor, a pioneer in fiberglass, latex and plastics. She was also a leader of the minimalist and post-minimalist movements. Aside from fiberglass, most of Hesse’s materials do not typically age well. This has driven conservators crazy over the years, but many fans of her work believe that gradual alteration has given her pieces more value.

here is something else made from old vinyl records, but this is designed for practical uses.  i think i want one

The first one is more literal: I’d like to look at the back of my head straight on (not through two mirrors at an angle).

The second is about color saturation, which I find to be beautiful. I also like the idea of holding a beautiful image in my hands.

In the final image, I was messing around with the idea of making the two-dimensional look three-dimensional. Not sure how successful it is, but it stretches the idea of morphing a single pieces of paper into something different. I think the palm wrinkles especially jump out.

Basically, a sailor falls into a hollowed-out whale head secured to the side of the ship. His weight causes the head to fall into the ocean. Queequeg, another sailor, saves the day.

I’m putting up both, because my first scan was unintentionally black and white, and I think I like it better.

Newspaper baskets:

Newspaper extendable bench:

More pictures of their work can be found at:  http://biltfurniture.com/

the concept of clothing has to come fromsomewhere.

follow the bread-crumb path backwards: start on the seams of a shirt and trace it back to it’s original idea.

MAYBE THIS IS WHAT YOU WILL SEE  in the space between begining and end

Here is the first part of the film

Taken from http://www.treehugger.com/design_architecture/?dtc=th_nav_design, at which there are other great ideas on reusing items.

katie glerum

This is by an artist Jen Stark who uses construction paper as a medium for drawing, sculpture and animation. A true alchemist.

age is just a number

I was surprised by how much the numbers could say. I liked working with simple figures and ideas to make a point.

Among the ones not uploaded are a Guide to Fantastical Critters (in case you cross paths with a Squg on the way to the VDub) and instruction manuals for operating Buttons of Doom, as well as antique-style advertisements.

This one features stamps that one could tear out and use, assuming one still keeps the antediluvian art of mailing letters alive, and refuses to have the Post Office stick their newfangled barcode stickers on one’s envelope. Since some stamps are illustrated using the engraving technique, and because a lot of comics appear to be done in a rushed, hurried way, I decided to use an illustrative style which closely mimics that which one might get from an engraving (e.g. constant width lines, swelling strokes, creating shade through thickness of line). The actual drawing is much finer than what’s on screen, though. Everything besides the illustrations was purposely kept simple and careless to further emphasize their detail – something which would also presumably contrast with other comics on the same sheet.

My aim here was to draw a comic that could be read either direction, starting from any panel. Unfortunately, due to time constraints, I’ve only been able to work out a rough sketch of what I would like to do. Ideally the images would go better with the text and would be more polished (we didn’t do weeks of drawing for nothing!), and the dialogue would also be improved. It would be great if each ring didn’t stand alone, but the different pie slices of the whole circle could be read together as well. Consider this a continuing project!

by araceli, charis, elizabeth, julie, and greg

Here is “Yesterday” by Ethan, Amanda, Tim, Emma, and Sophia!

The link above is to a travel photographer whose site I stumbled upon. I think these pictures genuinely capture the essence of these locations, at least that’s what I thought of the central america album. You should all check them out. They’re beautiful.

This is an excerpt from Frog and Toad–claymation made in the mid-80s and adapted from a classic children’s book. I distinctly remember this scaring me as a kid, especially when Frog starts to shrink in his seat.

however i thought it would be sweet to spread the word on [hans bellmer].

!!click here!

his sketches also have a nice bit of volume to them

he is one of my favorites and a nice big book on his work from the RISD library is staring me in the face.

okay, so this is how it goes:

the top two videos were made by my friend micah t. who is also a freshman here at brown. I really like the way he incorporates music into his animations.

the third video is a music video that is not stop-motion but may inspire some new thought.

the last video is some experimental film by one of my biggest influences Stan Brakhage. This piece mothlight, was created by pasting the wings of moths directly on film and then painting over them. Frame, by frame. His videos have really influenced the way I think about the potential of film. I actually love working with video and creating video installations and am really excited for this project.

CHEERS !

This was an art project by a student at SCAD. Enjoy!

Andrew Bird – Anonanimal

Hope you like them.

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m9Et7UQh1tg] 

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wKbJvM7VbQc&feature=PlayList&p=B944BAB9255B163F&index=1]

CLAYMATION! (“My Baby Just Cares for Me,” Nina Simone)

I went to town in the MML with the wacom tablet. I traced in Illustrator, then brought the image into photoshop to give it some color. Half of my face is filled with white space because I don’t believe I know enough about myself to accurate portray my own character. (Also when I drew all of those lines, it got to be a little crowded.) The squigglies on the side are meant to look like a heart monitor, going in one ear and out the other.

This was the original photo I worked off of. Leigh was kind enough to take it for me.

I hope it’s okay I submitted this assignment in the form of blog post, I figured it would be better than making a crappy print out from my printer. I would like to figure out how to print off of the MML’s nice photo printers on good paper at some point.

Here’s an excerpt:

A silk-screened image is flat, and without depth or volume. This perfectly suited Warhol because in painting Marilyn Monroe he wasn’t painting a woman of flesh, blood, and psychological complexity but a publicity photograph of a commodity created in a Hollywood studio. As Colin Clark’s anecdote suggests, you can’t look at Warhol’s Marilyn in the same way that you look at a painting by Rembrandt or Titian because Warhol isn’t interested in any of the things those artists were—the representation of material reality, the exploration of character, or the creation of pictorial illusion.

Warhol asked different questions about art. How does it differ from any other commodity? What value do we place on originality, invention, rarity, and the uniqueness of the art object? To do this he revisited long-neglected artistic genres such as history painting in his disaster series, still life in his soup cans and Brillo boxes, and the society portrait in Ethel Scull Thirty-Six Times. Though Warhol isn’t always seen as a conceptual artist, his most perceptive critic, Arthur C. Danto, calls him “the nearest thing to a philosophical genius the history of art has produced.”

Benjamin states that when unauthentic art is appreciated, that is when art becomes based not on art, but on politics. When I read this text, the first artist that came to my mind was Andy Warhol. The mechanical reproduction of his works is ongoing, the majority of his sales are not original pieces, yet the public still respond well to his work. The popularity of his pieces indicates that to a certain degree the ‘aura’ of his artwork still remains, as the public still has some connection with his art. Or perhaps the public are not connecting with the art, but in fact are connecting with the idea of art.
Perhaps the definition of art itself is changing rather than the acceptability of mechanical reproduction. Is the marketability of mechanical reproduction in this instance so successful because the meaning of art and its value has changed? Is mechanical reproduction of Warhol’s work so widely accepted because the public does not understand the essence of his artwork? Or is it accepted because art today has become politically and commercially driven?

I wonder if people enjoy his artwork for the accuracy of the mechanical reproductions, or in spite of mechanical reproduction. If mechanical reproduction adds another level of artistic value to the piece, does that mean that mechanical reproduction itself  should not be criticized for taking away the ‘aura’ or ‘presence in time and space’ of the piece, but rather because it is does not fit the general critically acceptable view of art as ‘unique’?

It is interesting to analyze Andy Warhol’s view on mechanical reproduction and the commercialization of art. Here are two of his quotes:
“Making money is art and working is art and good business is the best art.”

“I’ve decided something: Commercial things really do stink. As soon as it becomes commercial for a mass market it really stinks.”
Both statements seem to contradict each other; it is as if Andy Warhol himself could not pinpoint if (and why/why not) mechanical reproduction is acceptable, for the public and for the artist.

This is one of Ellsworth Kelly’s numerous pieces. He is a renowned modern artist and people pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to own his artwork. Obviously, it is extremely reproducible, even without modern technology. Yet, people still buy the real thing. His work is on display in museums across the world.  Obviously, Kelly is not a renowned artist for his technical prowess, but his creative integrity. Sure, we all could make great imitations of Kelly pieces. However, none of us thought to produce them on our own in the first place. None of us had that creative thought. Kelly’s art can never honestly be reproduced, because the the reproduction would lose the original’s only real value – its originality.

Yasumasa Morimura  is a contemporary Japanese photographer who plays with this idea through his manipulation of Manet’s Olympia–substituting his own face for the three characters in the image. He undermines the seemingly factual nature of photographs, by making his work highly fictional and staged. He pays homage to past art forms–prior the the age of mechanical reproduction–by conflating his photography with the aura-filled art of painting. Moreover, his identity as a Japanese man contemplating a once very controversial European painting is at once challenging for the viewer and surprisingly appropriate.

The idea of artistic function – that art can be reduced to the societal and political environment of its production time and comes about as a direct result of these and therein lies its significance. It is a showcase of an environment rather than the expression of an individual. (right-brained people tend not to like this idea I think.)

Feeding into that is the fallacy of imagination – that true creativity does not exist, our experience is a set of chemical reactions and art arises from a particular set of neural activity. I love this idea of the intersection of art and science, or really, the dominance of science over everything and the transformation of a mundane and predictable series of reactions into a transcendentally beautiful (sublime) experience.

Who is in control, then of art? Has the rise of modern art has put the power in the hands of the audience (absorbing rather than being absorbed) or taken it away (‘I can no longer think what I want to think. My thoughts have been replaced by moving images’). If we accept the idea of art as a function of environment, no-one has control. If we accept the idea of god, then god has control. And if we are Facists, we use the desire for control over aesthetic self-expression to achieve control over rights generally perceived as more fundamental.

Rarity; widely valued but also widely regarded as a desire that is not entirely wholesome and one that arises from greed and love of power (rare things have a certain power, because only a small percentage of the population can possess them). Does rarity occlude the true aesthetic experience of art and is this point the purpose of, for example: the Dadaist’s use of elements of little value in their work?

The seemingly primal and usually controlled urge for the destruction of beauty, which is part of the reaction to beauty. War is an example of a loss of this control. It is not a natural state, yet all humans understand the desire for violence and destruction. If we respond to and seek to bring about cyclical change, is destruction simply part of the aesthetic experience?

For me, one crucial topic that I think is missing from Benjamin’s essay is the potential of human creativity, which is much more unpredictable and even more infinite than mechanical reproduction. Certainly, images have been produced for the purpose of reproducibility (ads, logos, labels, etc.). But are all ‘images’ necessarily ‘art’?

The title of my post asks, Can human creativity escape mechanical reproduction? For me, the answer is yes. I think art continues to evolve because artists (or at least many of them) still attempt to create works that escape reproducibility, and often succeed (e.g. the emergence of installation art). I think that art has also kept somewhat of a distance from politics (although power dynamics are not necessarily absent from the way art operates in society) – as Benjamin predicts/suggests in regard to communism and art – as a result of the continuous exertion of human creativity.

In his epilogue, Benjamin suggests, “The logical result of Fascism is the introduction of aesthetics into political life.”  In the 1930s the Nazi party found that one effective way to unite Germany behind its cause was to present an idealized image of the German volk in film. “Triumph of the Will” bombards the viewer with images of millions of gleeful Germans, waving flags and hailing Hitler. Interspersed throughout are sweeping arial shots of the majestic towers of Nuremberg, and angelic children laughing and clapping for the Nazi parade. It is through the reproduction of such a film that art serves its new purpose–to unite the masses behind a dominant political ideology.

Walker Evans – Hale County, Alabama – 1936

Sherrie Levine – After Walker Evans – 1981

I think Sherrie Levine makes one of the most interesting commentaries on the questions of reproduction and originality that Benjamin raises in his essay. She took pictures of Walter Evans photographs in an exhibition catalog then displayed them as her own. For me, this act raises a series of questions I prefer to leave open: If these two pictures look essentially the same, do they have different artistic value? Each obviously sends a different message, so how does context influcence art? Is one of them better, more interesting? If I rephotographed Levine’s rephotographs would that have the same force as her originals? To put each of those pictures online, someone already had to take pictures of them. Is something lost in this process, as Benjamin suggests, or is something gained, as Levine demonstrates?

This line was what struck me most about the Benjamin essay. Though Benjamin discusses film and photography in relation to painting, I found it quite odd that another important medium of art was conspicuously absent: music. All of the reproducible qualities of film and photography that set them apart from painting are even more inherent to music, especially in today’s industry. Pieces of music are now composed primarily for mass consumption in the form of compact discs or even digital media, so every song we hear is a copy of the original. But what is intriguing about the application of Benjamin’s theory to the realm of music is the confusion as to what the original actually is. In film, the artist records and edits video to make a product that is then reproduced. Most music, however, is rehearsed multiple times and then recorded in the studio. But what is the original work of art in this case? Is it the written song? Is it its first performance? Or is it the first recording of it that is made? Even live performances of a song can be considered reproductions. On the other hand, no two live renditions of a piece of music can be exactly the same, so is each successive performance an original work of art? It seems that music is even further detached from the concept of originality because the original no longer matters, the reproduction is the only form with importance.

Benjamin also mentions that “painting is in no position to present an object for simultaneous collective experience” and goes on to explain that this collective experience is indeed a property of modern film, as films are initially viewed in the group settings of theaters. Despite the fact that music was initially only live performances to a mass audience, in today’s world it is primarily consumed alone. Similar to the way a painting invites a spectator to contemplate in solitude, music invites a listener to deeply focus on what he or she is hearing in a private setting. So even though music is more about its reproducibility than film, it echoes the qualities of a painting in that it lacks a collective experience, demonstrating the complications of Benjamin’s theory on the reproduction of art in the modern world.

A feeble attempt to respond to the essay that will somehow be utilized before the end of this post

Still, I shall soldier on in penning a response. I feel that he leaves out the rather crucial matter of the implications of creating a reproduction on the creator, and that the currently extremely expedited processes of reproduction still warrant attention to the effort of reproduction itself and are not to be taken for granted.  There is so much that goes into the production of a single negative of film – the discovery of the materials, research to produce better film and developing techniques, for example – and a production of a print from that negative. What more for other more time-consuming methods of mechanical and manual reproduction? Surely the act and experience of creating a reproduction deserves attention in itself. This is a more artist or creator-centric view than the viewer-centric view Benjamin adopts.

Benjamin also makes the point that the ‘aura’ of a work of art is derived from its tradition and historical experiences, but I feel that the aesthetic properties of the work itself should be part of the ‘aura’. After all, there must have been something about the original work that warranted its reproduction for viewing and surely a viewer can be affected personally by a print of a work of art as he/she is by the original work, at least in terms of the image portrayed, if not physical properties like texture and location. And a copy of the image reproduces most, if not all, of the aesthetic properties of the original work.

Hence the following hypothetical situation: suppose we had the most perfect reproduction of a work of art possible that to the naked eye it was indistinguishable from the original piece, and the situation illustrated in the comic above occurred. Identifying a piece as a ‘copy’ and tying it so strongly to the original artwork limits how we look at it and prevents the appreciation of the piece as a work of art in itself.

Although Benjamin brings up important concerns about originality and discusses the detrimental effects of mechanical reproduction, I see several positive aspects relating to imitation and reproduction. First, reproduction technologies provide more visibility and makes art more accessible to greater audiences. It also has the ability to provide more insight to the original work and may revive interest or discussion that may have been forgotten. Additionally, as similar as two pieces of art may be, no two works are exactly the same. I feel that the positive side of this is that every artist can add a unique quality or characteristic to an original. Overall, I think that as long as the original is not forgotten, replicas do not pose a problem. For instance, in class we discussed the Marcus Aurelius statue that is a replica of another located in Italy. I feel that having the replica on a college campus is fine as long as the fact that the original was meant for a different location and had a different context is not forgotten or ignored.

Yet there is a contradiction to what he is saying: something is lost when a work of art is reproduced. An authentic work of art is linked with a specific time and place, with a history, and the reproduction takes it out of this situation. Therefore the “aura” of an authentic object becomes lost through reproduction. A few questions came into my head when reading this article. First of all, what constitutes the value of art? Who says an original Picasso is worth more than a Cezanne or Lautrec? Didn’t Picasso copy, or make a replica, of Cezanne’s cubism? Does reproduction, as Benjamin believes, destroy the value of a work of art? 

For example, there was an exhibition of Picasso at the Whitney Museum in 2006. It showed paintings by artists heavily influenced by Picasso. I posted a picture below, a side-by-side painting of an American artist, Stuart Davis, and a Picasso. Which one is more valuable, and why? The convential answer would be the Stuart Davis… Why is that? Because he was influenced by Picasso, the same way Picasso was influenced by Cezanne?

(I have no idea how to upload video clips, but this is the link)

http://www.gizmodo.com.au/2009/09/this-clip-is-proof-that-birds-are-secretly-composers/

-Charis

http://www.blublu.org/sito/video/muto.htm

also I was sick Thursday as well and I still haven’t been able to reach anyone about class tomorrow, so any comments about class location would be greatly appreciated

-Michael

I’ve been out sick all week, and am curious to know what’s been going on in class.  I hear that there were figure drawings on Tuesday and Thursday.  Do we have any specific sketchbook assignments for the weekend?  Also, where are we meeting for class next Tuesday?

Please help me out — and I wish everyone a fun-filled long weekend!

Much thanks,

Leila

“At first it just looked like a picture of a bunch of lily pads, but then I started scraping at it with my pocket knife and the whole painting just sort of spoke to me,” Schmidt said. “For the first time, I finally understand what Monet was trying to get across in her work.”

Met officials feel that a few smudged or punctured O'Keeffes are a small price to pay for renewed interest in the arts.

It’s a satirical piece all right, but what if this were really to happen?

-Charis

http://www.hedislimane.com/diary/index.php

Hedi Slimane is a fashion photographer and I loved how she captured childhood innocence and sexual tension and awareness in the same picture. This propelled me to gather a few of my friends on a sunny afternoon, and use them as my subjects to try and capture the same feeling.

Here is what I came up with: 

I would love and appreciate any feedback.

Next, I noticed Araceli’s post about illusions of perspective. It just reminded me of Borromini’s tromp l’oeil hallway in Palazzo Spada in Rome, Italy. It is an interesting to see the way that we can play with perspective to create illusions. In my opinion, this illusion even helps illuminate some of the theories of perspective and why perspective translates into 3D.  (the third image shows the Borromini’s hallway)

I like his approach to drawing because he emphasizes actually understanding how nature works, like observing how light plays out on the subject and using shades to flesh out the object, compared to, say, other books in the market which focus a lot on formulaic approaches to drawing (a horse is made up of two large circles, rectangles, etc).

His philosophy – to learn to draw is to draw and draw and draw – is something I find very dear to my heart. It implies that everyone can draw well, not just draw, as long as they work towards it, and which means that learning to draw, learning art, is not confined only to those who have formal art training (although that may help as well).

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3055/2982281565_caee02ae23_o.jpg

Back:

I was procrasinating and started looking through my facebook friend list, and I realized I had not spoken with about 300 of my ‘friends’ in over half a year, since I left high school. And about 30 of them I had never even met or talked to virtually or face-to-face, people who had added me or who I added because of similar ‘network(s)’. I found this extremely ironic… and kind of sad.
 This brings up recent debates surround social networking sites. I wanted to address the following questions:  How effective are social networking sites? Do they bring people closer together? What message do social networking sites send out about the importance of popularity? 
I wanted to create an ironic/humorous tee shirt that juxtaposed ’virtual reality’ with actual reality. 

The most effective images invoke strong emotional response. So, I wanted to create a t-shirt that was slightly gruesome. Your eye is meant to extrapolate the tire track, so you imagine that the person wearing the t-shirt has been run over. The inverted colors are meant to create the image of an x-ray, the eeriness and tension of an ER.
The MATD on the back is a play on the real organisation MADD’s acronym for Mothers Against Drinking and Driving.

I toyed with the idea of drawing organs in their respective locations, (like the ‘skeleton’ t-shirts) but it seemed too cluttered. So I narrowed it down. The most symbolic organ is the heart, which is also commonly associated with emotion, so it seemed fitting that I used this image. I wanted to make this more personal, so I sketched a heart myself and scanned it into photoshop.
I like the idea of playing with reality and 3D images on the 2D surface of the t-shirt. I found a design on the internet which had realistic-looking headphones printed around the collar of the t-shirt. It suprises people and puts a smile on their faces, as from afar they assume the image is real, but when they get closer they’re disproven. It is an illusion in a sense-and I’m a sucker for illusions. So, here, I decided to substitute the headphones with a stethoscope to suit the theme.

I intend to print this t-shirt as a birthday present for a friend of mine, who has wanted to be a surgeon since she was 6 years old.

this one started with the idea of a shirt with two contrasting images side by side, of nature vs. urban civilization (with maybe some underlying message about the environment and pollution). what i ended up with is this sort of Godzilla scene…not sure if its a t-shirt kind of thing…

playing with trace

In the above design I tried to simplify my entire thought process. Rather than scan in sketches, I traced a photograph of a license plate and inverted the colors. I am a fan of repetition, and believe in the window-display rule (groups of three are pleasing to the eye). The play-on-words I used in my original mock-up is presented in a much cleaner way.

More sinister version of first mock-up. (Channeling fish blood).

Final design

The red and black design is in stark contrast to my simplified shirt. I chose to make my original mock-up more sinister, emphasizing the danger of relying too heavily on the catfish market in Alabama. I have a distinct memory of watching my grandfather butcher a fish when I was very little, and the blood reds stand out in my mind. However, I believe that the harsh reds make the design a little too busy. I like the stark black and white of my original fish idea. ——-

After hours of agonizing over more complicated designs, I whipped up this last one in a few minutes. However, I feel that it is the most aesthetically pleasing of the lot. I like the idea of a catfish farm “rising up.” The image of catfish ponds and two grain silos is turned into an upward-pointing arrow.

Tshirt 2:  I facilitate the female sexuality workshop, and promoting safe sex is something I find important, so when I found the condom image I immidiately decided I wanted to wear it.

I created this image in Illustrator. I got the idea from a song entitled “Heart Cooks Brain”, which is a motto that really rings true for me.

This next idea I had in class the other day when we discussed the Che T Shirt. The words say “Cash Rules Everything Around Me”, derived from the Wu-Tang-Clan classic “C.R.E.A.M.”

This one I posted earlier, but I figured it would be convenient to have all of my ideas in one post. It came from a sketch I did which I then scanned into Photoshop. I like this one the most because of its use of shapes and lines.

The next day, I found an image of a feather online in class, and decided to play with it.

This is the original image:

A Single White Feather

Duplicating and translating it in Photoshop, I came up with the following B&W design.

B&W

After I’d added colour to it, I realized that it was pretty static, so I decided to cut things up a bit. This was meant to explore how the human eye and consciousness treats objects as a whole group – even though the design is fragmented here, you can tell roughly how the original looked like, and you’re more likely to perceive it was a whole.

Final Design

…come to think of it, this actually looks a LOT like Photoshop/Illustrator CS3 where feathers are a huge thing in the theme e.g. in the loading and welcome screen, icons, etc. Maybe it’s a manifestation of how much I miss CS3.

The third idea I came up with was when I was thinking of how convenient it would be for someone who had a sore throat/flu/loss of voice to have a shirt to facilitate…normal conversation:

The Convershirt

Both the wearer and the viewer would be able to interact with the shirt, which is an example of how art can facilitate connections between people.

Once one is familiar with exactly where the phrases are located on the shirt, imagine how much fun a conversation would be. Poke. Poke poke. Shrug. Excited poke. Poke poke poke.

The third design was inspired by and for Spring Weekend. As I was trying to form ideas, I kept coming back to very political messages. However, because I don’t usually wear politcal t-shirts, I wanted to design something more light-hearted and fun. As a result, I drew Bruno, our loved mascot, drinking beer out of a mug. On the back, I tweaked a quote that my friends and I often use: “You can always re-take a class, but you can’t re-live a weekend (not that we really mean it, of course).” In this case however, I wanted the shirt to be more representative of the insanity that occurs during Spring Weekend.

The first is just a fun idea I had while doodling in another class. The second I came up with while listening to Steve Reich (his music uses a lot of woodwinds.)

I’m playing with the notion of how society values art.  It’s easy to value art for the sake of art on a personal or small-group level; but I think we live in a society in which everything – including art – is somehow “worth” a “set price” in “the market.”

I started to play around with some ideas, like the two following images, but I found them too cliche.

The one I settled on [for now] is the following image.  I found a list of the world’s most expensive paintings on Wikipedia, selected some, and calculated their value.  The overall feeling of the poster is meant to be very “standard”; a closer look should portray the ridiculousness of the “equation.”

So here are the two already up. More information on them can be found by the intrepid blog voyager willing to wade back a few pages:

And here is the first new one:

This video is essential context for the shirt: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JMhNH7aBcuI

My friend told me the story of a Minnesota woman who shot an albino deer. He found this highly evocative and wrote the screenplay for an animated movie about it entitled “Shoot the Freak” (so this shirt is essentially plagiarism…). I feel the font I used is reminiscent perhaps of a carnival style Old West shooting show. Beyond comments on hunting, I think the story speaks of tolerance and how we treat difference in general.

The deer on the shirt was actually white to begin with! You can access the original picture here : http://media.photobucket.com/image/albino%20deer/jci63/White%20Deer/Mount.jpg

And my final T Shirt:

I really wanted to do one shirt that had to do with a book, and since I’m taking a class on James Joyce, who better to use? Though I’ve never read “Finnegans Wake” (who has?) I think Joyce would appreciate the word play, and though I like the way this turned out visually, I was aiming for some comment on a novel all about sleep and dreaming: How could someone reading such a circular book endlessly possibly sleep when they are most likely being driven mad with frustration?

Hope you guys like these, and I for one am excited to be able to wear them!

In this t-shirt you can see the state of Rhode Island (with Providence marked) and Texas (with Laredo, my hometown, marked). I was hearing a Michael Buble song called Home when I was inspired to do this shirt. The lyrics of the song are in the t-shirt. Although I lived in Laredo, TX for 18 years before coming to Providence, I feel like Providence has earned the right to be called home because of the second family I’ve been able to find among my friends.

Two tshirts with boomboxes.

Still, requirements will be requirements, and assignments will be assignments, and I suppose this is all part of the ‘pushing yourself’ part of college. This will not be my final t-shirt design, but it is one of the ideas I had that actually saw the light of Photoshop, which is pretty sad, considering this wasn’t exactly a ‘new’ drawing either.

What does it mean to ‘obey art’? Is it to follow your inner muse? To go where your artistic proclivities take you? Or follow conventions of art set by others, or choose to rebel against them for the sake of rebelling (and the ensuing feel-good factor)? Do you stay true to your own art at the expense of, perhaps, public acceptance, growth, exploration? What is art, anyway?

Because It Says So

Come to think of it, I don’t actually know why I ever drew this in the first place. This must have been the effect of staring at too many Shepard Fairey paintings.

Sorry everyone that I’m posting this so late! My illiteracy of technology was problematic for me.

Anyway!  I made these banners just by finding random images that I thought were pretty sweet and then incorporating them into the picture.  The limecat is my favorite.  But I also think the tattooed tongue is awesome.  I think that it was photoshopped, but not by me..

Here is a t shirt design.  I tend to group graphic ts in the catagories of clever, public service annoucements, or other.  Here I tried to combine the clever and public service catagories.  I thought it was silly that the earth would appear with a temperature to show that it was “warm.”

the back ground image is the van wickle gates.

However I disagree. I am Israeli and therefore I had to serve a mandatory two years in the Israeli Defense Forces. Violence comes from many things: a lack of parental love, too much leniency in the educational system, a lack of morality and values, etc. I believe political violence is different, and does not work through osmosis: I believe in the opposite. People unite together AGAINST violence. My fellow soldiers serve their country not for the sake of revenge and for increasing violence, but for peace. There is not one Israeli that I know that does not want peace. We all enlist in the army for that reason, so we can go into the mall without being checked by a security guard, so we get on an El-Al flight without coming to the airport six hours in advance for the security check, so we can use public transportation without an incessant, nagging fear. 

I created my T-shirt from a picture I took six months ago. The message I am trying to relay is that yes, people enlist in the army to FIGHT, but it is not to fight in order to create more discord, it is to fight for peace, especially for peace of mind, and to defend our right to exist. 

glORIGAMI

A Tribute to two of my favorite film makers: Stan Brakhage ( mothlight) and Jan Svankmajer ( Alice in Wonderland)

First there were distressed jeans, now there is a pre-wrinkled shirt. YAY, hipsters rejoice! 

This is an inside joke, and consequently the image I like best. LATFH refers to the blog latfh.com. “Pickles Surprise” refers to a film by Tom Rubnitz. The boy featured is the individual who shared the aforementioned media with me.  

Then when thinking about the header, I was staring kind of blankly at this tile table.  The coloring was black and brown, and it looked a lot like a jumble of pixels when you zoom in really tight on photoshop.  I started sketching a bit and this is what happened:

With a new year there is new people to meet and my name is always on mind whether it is because it is odd or hard to pronounce.  Here I bring one of the many myths about the constellation Ara. The constellation is in the center while a Centaur, Chiron, is on the upper right hand side and an altar on the other side. The story says Chiron was the creator of the altar so that sacrifices could be made for him. Of course this is one of many many stories, but at one point Ara was considered Ara Centauri in his honor.

This is a cut out of me wearing my Grandpa’s shirt. He gave me this shirt when I was ten years old and he couldn’t fit into it anymore…My grandpa is pictured  here as a young man parallel to the zebras.

(My pose/absent arms reminds me of the Venus de Milo statue)

For the blog, I thought it might be fun to reinterpret Brownfoundations not as Brown foundations, but brown found -ations, as in words that end with ation. I would have loved to wander around Providence looking for found words (which I suppose is somewhat tantamount to found art) to use, but in the interest of time I did my exploring on google, a sort of 21st century stroll if you will (perhaps someone should rewrite “Ulysses” as a one day trek through the interweb. They could call it “i <3 homer, lol”). Here’s what I came up with:

For my t-shirt I have 2 designs:

The sketch was my first t-shirt idea, and I decided to amp up the political connotations of the flag by placing it on the Capitol (if anyone’s interests I got “Nobody’s Home” from a book of the same title by Dubravka Eugresic). A lot of political shirts tend to lean towards some form of clear cut ideology (for example, all the Obama shirts from last year), so I wanted to make something a little more far reaching and ambiguous (I think ambiguity is a huge part of the art that appeals to me.)

And #2:

For some reason I find the idea of mimes doing sign language incredibly amusing. The idea of mutes appropriating the language and symbols of other people who talk without speaking also resonates with themes of language and communication. Semaphore flags were easier to do, plus they create a more interesting color contrast. I’m still hesitant about working outside of black and white so this was an easy way to add some life. Bonus points for anyone who finds out what they’re saying… I promise it’s not gibberish.

Playing with idea of “foundation” …here the mountains and sky below support the land and water above. I put  a photograph I took of land/sea above another image I captured of mountains/sky to challenge my/our conceptions of “foundation.” Is a single conception of artistic foundation necessary for all subsequent creations? Is there,  or should there be, “right” kind of foundation for everyone? I am challenging my own idea of foundation by inverting the sky and earth. Human eyes stare back at the viewer probing the viewer to develop her/his own notion of foundation. The garbage can serves for throwing away/retrieving ideas (I have enjoyed using so-called “garbage” in creating art).

I had a hard time deciding whether I should stay in this class or not because I was really overwhelmed with the challenge of being able to present things visually.  One thing that I’m really interested in these days is economic ideas – not high level theories of finance or anything – but rather, looking at how we as a society have come to define notions of what is natural, rational, and valuable.  I’m working on a thesis about public intellectuals’ works on global “development.”

The piece was inspired by a 2004 article in the Guardian entitled “The world’s most expensive piece of art … a £58m Picasso painting.” It is one way I’ve begun to explore some of these questions about the presence of art in our society. I’ve always been curious about the money-side of art in many ways:

(1) Sometimes I go to a museum like MoMA and feel that some works have nothing to offer the public.  There is probably a lot of money and value appraisal involved with getting your works displayed at top-tier museums/galleries.

(2) What to make of all the “valuable” artwork (graffiti, street portraits, etc.) that would not be “valuable” in the monetary sense as well as the bourgeois art world?

(3) The art “market.” Are auctions really the best way to put value on an artwork?

I wanted to create a design that reflects a fun and artistic learning environment. The charcoal scribble in the background represents an artist’s thumbnail sketches. It’s the initial rough sketching that makes all the creative, original final designs on this post possible- so, I felt I needed to show that. While making this header, I tried to keep in mind simplicity and boldness, two things which we discussed as a class last lesson.

Below is my mockup for a t-shirt. I may totally switch gears from this, but I’ve been playing around with images of catfish. I spent a month in rural Alabama this summer, in a region that is entirely economically dependent on the catfish industry. It’s a vicious cycle, because catfish is lucrative for the state, but the fish plants can’t provide lucrative jobs to workers. I want to make a sinister play on the classic song “Stars Fell on Alabama,” possibly suggesting that Alabama is being crushed by the catfish. The phrase “Stars Fell on Alabama” also appears on all of the state license plates in the state. I’m going to have to make adjustments in terms of actual dimensions for the final design.

Foundations Blog Redesign

I chose to use color as the main focus of my blog header. I love the colors in the mosaic tile background and wanted the title to very clear.

Here is my second idea, which fits the required size better.

The second is a rip off the ridiculously popular John & Paul & George & Ringo shirts.

So I began by turning to everyone’s answers to the question “what is art?”.  I began with typing some of the key words that one or more people had identified; for a person like me, with no exposure to art theory, the discussions we’ve been having in class have become a real foundation and entryway to “art.”

Hopefully the resulting image didn’t turn out to be too cluttered.

I wanted to visually represent my DJ name to make it easier to remember, so I used my limited photoshop abilities to paint a red cranberry and place “DJ” in it in white. I realize it is very simple, but I think it effectively advertises my DJ name. The back again reinforces the DJ name with cranberries in the background and contact info in white.

I don’t know who that hand belongs to but that’s okay.

Credit for stock images:

http://www.vecteezy.com/vf/1057-Post-it

http://www.eon9.net/paper_texture.jpg

This was the first silly idea that popped into my head.

This card is kind of a mish-mosh of what I do and what’s important to me.   I played around with a lot of the photoshop filters and options and tried to incorporate the Gestalt principle of closure.

And here’s a t-shirt from threadless that I thought was funny (corrupting an old childhood toy):

My Little Outlaws - threadless

Card and Wheels

Considering that a business card is supposed to convey some aspect of one’s self, I wanted my art to be part of the card, but had to do so in a way that the viewer wouldn’t be confronted with too many images at once. Making the card interactive* seemed to be one of the solutions.

At first I thought of making a circular card, using just the wheels held together with a rivet so that they were each individually swivellable, but the white words on the plastic wheel would not be very readable on top of a highly contrasted background (and you can’t get a circle at 2×3.5 inches), so I integrated them into a standard rectangular card.

Front

The black rectangle can be thought of as an envelope with a window cut through it, so a quarter of the paper wheel nested within it always shows, on both sides. The window is the only geometric shape in the card with a curved contour, helping it to contrast with the other shapes (diamond, rectangle) and direct the eye to wheel. The wheel’s actual size is slightly larger than what the window suggests, so it stays in place within the black ‘envelope’. This conveys a sense that there is always more than meets the eye, which I suppose is a fine thing to say with my business card.

Back

The wheel itself has different images on its two faces, as illustrated, maximizing the number of images I could have the card show. At the back, an additional transparent plastic wheel is attached, also via the rivet, and it can swivel as well. It contains other essential business card information, and four arbitrary words describing my work. One could play around with it to get the word that best describes the image directly below – in the picture above, ‘Design’ corresponds to a digital graphic poster I’d made previously. I like to have a lot of detail in my work, and this is conveyed by the many different things a person could do with the card, instead of just holding and looking at it.

The repeating diamond patterns (proximity, in terms of the Gestalt principles) would not actually be part of the paper itself, but a smooth, slightly shiny layer on top of the matte black background, giving the card a nice texture and sheen (which I’ve tried to replicate by airbrushing the corners) and helping to tie all of the elements in it together. The wheel would not have the diamond texture on it, just a matte one, in order to create contrast in texture as well.

Of course, this isn’t the most economical business card around, but I like to indulge in such fantasies every now and then.

*If only strictly 2D cards are allowed, the card would remain essentially the same, with the ‘window’ at the back filled over with the standard black patterned background, and the words on the plastic wheel becoming part of the print. The matte and shiny layers would then overlay everything except the quarter of the image on the front, and I would crack my head choosing the particular image. This post would also be a lot shorter.

My business card is a combination of show and tell. I literally show myself (in a perhaps less-than-flattering light) and tell the possessor of my card what I am about in a 2.5″ x 3″ biography. I tried to use the line of my gaze as an example of continuation, drawing the viewer’s eye from my slack jaw to my phone number and middle name. My middle name is my favorite name, and, especially now, helps to distinguish me from all the other Emma W’s out there. Harhar…. I also played with proximity by multiplying myself and overlapping identical images. I have no idea what business I might find myself in a few years from now, but right now collecting seems pretty attractive!

And now a t-shirt:

"Conservation Status" -- Threadless

Let me preface this with a confession: I have never been that into Threadless. I had low expectations leading up to this assignment. However, this particular shirt caught my eye right away. I love that the image fills the whole space of the t-shirt without looking crowded or messy. I am always drawn to splashes of color and the simplicity of silhouette, as detail and print on clothing takes a long gaze to interpret. The message of the shirt is funny and clever—the statement that humans tend to rank the importance of living creatures is anything but harsh. I also like that the humor of the shirt increases from top to bottom, developing into a joke when read with a natural scan of the eyes.

I am thinking about perception.

When I first meet you and give you my business card, you imagine things about me (and about the image on the card) without having the full knowledge of who I am. Your perception of me from this card is based more on your own expectations and previous human interactions than my identity apart from your judgment (yet what is my identity without your perception, or what I assume you perceive, to create it?)

I took this photograph while flying over California. The actual image I took with my camera was not able to reproduce how the land looked with the naked eye nor how I desired it to look.  Photoshop allowed me to construct how I perceived the land, and further, how I wish the land had looked. Overlaying the image, I included multiple copies of a Sylvia Plath poem entitled “Mad Girl’s Love Song.”  Plath describes how our world is construed by our eyes alone and when we close our eyes it disappears (“I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead”). She’s implying that humans construct the world and ideas (art/science/religion) emotions (love) as narratives that assign meaning to life.  These narratives are entirely unique to each of us given our inherently different perceptions (“I think I made you up inside my head”). Plath is considered mad, but really she’s just seeing through her own eyes. Or maybe we are all mad. Nevertheless, you imagine me and I imagine you and the world (etc) goes on without us.

I am expressing that a single card cannot represent the multitudinousness in each of us. Yet this ritual persists. Playing along, I give you my card knowing you will see things in me and the image that I cannot see or didn’t intend for you to see. This is the thrill of creation.

I took this opportunity to make a card advertising a show I do with my friend Christine on Brown Student Radio called The Pleasure Principle (it airs Mondays at 6:30 on bsrlive.com.) Even though we usually don’t spin actual records, I used a turntable as inspiration for my design. Because I had to include a lot of information and didn’t want to waste any space, I tried to make the most out of the text by incorporating the shapes of the words into as many parts of the turntable as possible. I avoided using color because I really like the contrast between black, white, and grey and I wanted a more simplistic feel. I only used circles and rectangles for my shapes because I wanted the card to have a sense of unity.

I chose this t-shirt because when I was browsing online trying to find an article of clothing that really stuck out, I kept coming back to this design and the message printed on front. I am not a fan of many of the quirky messages written on today’s t-shirts, like “Your boyfriend thinks I’m hot;” however, I am a fan of the more serious messages that take a stand on different policies or events, such as the War in Iraq or Genocide in Sudan. For that reason, I found this shirt particularly interesting. While it clearly gives an image of the harm we are doing to our earth by using up our resources at such a devastating rate, it does not say anything about deforestation; in fact, is doesn’t say anything at all. I find this to be an interesting approach to expressing personal views while not explicitly saying what they are. Ultimately, I feel it creates a healthy interaction between the person wearing the shirt and the viewer because the shirt simply states the facts without imposing a stand.

So my business card is really simple. I think simplicity is good for business card, especially when it comes to information.  Plus at the moment I don’t have a degree or title to brag about. Unfortunately I didn’t realize having a white background wouldn’t look too great on the blog, but I like how peaceful and clean a white business card looks. I really liked the idea of using grays with a little bit of color which was really my response after finding the t-shirt design I posted earlier.  Other than that I really like my business card.

This business card is meant to be double-sided.  The front image of the card consists of the name that I go by, Leila Kang, with the consonants from my Korean name (강석주) weaved into it.  The issue of identity has always been central to my life, and remains unresolved.  I wanted to express the importance of language and biculturalism to myself as an individual.  I do worry that the visual appeal of the card depends on the viewer’s knowledge of Korean; but let’s suppose that I expect to pass this card out to at least some speakers of the Korean language.

The basic idea for my design was inspired by the Belgian painter James Ensor’s business card:

I love the stark black and white colors, the minimal amount of information (to be fair he was born when email and phones didn’t exist, but even his address is hard to read, and is definitely not as important as the name), and the grim motif of death. Since I don’t (yet) consider “artist-painter” to be my profession, I went even more bare bones:

And then tried a minor adjustment:

Though I’m partial to the minimalism above, I wanted to get a little more across, so I wrote a little, slightly absurd, poem. What I’ve ended up with is something of an anti-business card. The point of BCs is usually to give some useful information to their bearers, but instead they would simply get a name (if they can read it) and a nonsensical poem, presumably leaving them even more confused and hopefully encouraging them to want to know me better, rather than learning about me from a piece of paper:

Then I threw in some images… Just for the record, the robot is from a t-shirt designed by the (amazing) graphic novelist Chris Ware which is for sale at shirt.woot.com which was mentioned below by Arceli.

And again:Sorry once more for the length of this post… This is probably more than anyone ever wanted to know about my creative process in designing business card.

This design is called Folded Flight. I find it’s simplicity extremely elegant. There are a lot of things I like about this shirt.  The kanji symbol on the bottom left isn’t dominating the design because of the light color being used.  It is a nice  addition plus the symbol means flight. The choice of light gray shades really draws the eye to the red bird. However, the fact that the shirt is a light almost peach color doesn’t make the red bird too dramatic.  I also like the small design in the bird’s back because it gives it texture. My favorite part of the design is that the birds are origami birds. Although it isn’t actual paper thanks to the different shades of red and added texture it gives the bird dimension and the simple squares are perceived as a whole.

'Limited Edition' - Headline Shirts

Yes, we’re not cool.

I like how this shirt pokes fun at the increasing commercialization of and demand for ‘indie’ designers, by those who find it desirable to project themselves as shunning ‘overcommercialized’ brands and items in favour of ‘marginalized creative types’. Being part of a select group of people who are aware of and can identify a certain artist’s work is fun, if only for the sake of being able to know something that the general public doesn’t, to feel special and distinct. An example of that would be Shepard Fairey’s Obey Giant street art work; the response by people unaware of the motif of such images, and the response by those who know what it is all about, would differ. (Unfortunately Fairey’s work is becoming increasingly commercialized – you can find Obey Giant stickers on sale at the mall)

But we can still read, even if we’re not cool, which means we can ‘understand’ this shirt:

'You Look Funny Doing That With Your Head' - SnorgTees

The design interacts with the viewer in a circular way – the viewer may (consciously or unconsciously) rotate his or her head in order to view the design more clearly, which turns out to be a commentary on that action itself and therefore the viewer. It makes for good fun and conversation-starters, although, as all such t-shirts go, wear at your own risk.

This shirt first jumped out at me because of the design’s shape and the color contrast between the pictured object and the t-shirt. Upon closer inspection, the various textures in the apple’s skin and soft, fleshy insides appealed to my senses (it looks delicious and crisp) and I was intrigued by the clever combination of the forbidden fruit and the snake (both from the story of Adam and Eve) into one cohesive whole. The transition between peel and snake is almost seamless and I especially like how the snake remains flat and folds its body over itself, mixing both 2-dimensional and 3-dimensional elements into one image.

Art is the expression of energy. It is energy that manifests itself on a once black page and is finally release when pen, or pencil, or oils, or mixed mediums touch the paper. Art begins where words fail. Art moves the heart while words move the mind, and without words, art allows us to explore the reactions of our hearts. Art captures energy and all emotion in an everlasting frame. Art makes us question the world around us, and question ourselves. Art is meditative.

This is Bleu II by Joan Miro:

Judith Supine is both an activist and an artist. His work transcends the walls of galleries and becomes a part of New York’s cityscape. His work even extends past the borders of New York, since photographs of his collages and videos of his work are easily found on the internet on sites such as flikr and YouTube.  For those not familiar with Judith ( yes he is male, he took on his mother’s name and “supine” as the birthing position as his name to avoid run-ins with the law). Judith has hung his work off the Manhattan Bridge  and made it float on the East river. In addition he has also posted his work on the Army recruitment center in Times Square.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/judithsupine/

-julie

This is not at all beautiful or aesthetically pleasing in the traditional sense, but it is art. Whether your response to this sculpture is fear, disgust, or pity does not matter; the response itself validates the sculpture’s status as a work of art. Art appeals to our most visceral emotions and instincts in a way that usual dialogue cannot. It serves as a way of expressing feelings and communicating ideas from creator to observer at a more basic and direct level. Mueck could have just told us about the sad old naked man represented by the sculpture, but it would lose something in the translation that is apparent in the sculpture. In creative writing classes we’re usually told to “show, don’t tell.” Art is the way we can “show.”

Splash of Color taken by Ryan Taylor

Art is the physical manifestation (performance, painting, sculpture, drawing, etc.) of an idea or concept that the artist wants to share.  The artist may have a specific concept in mind, but the beauty of art is that there are no limitations on how a viewer can interpret a piece of artwork.  A viewer is given a window into the mind of the artist and the concept he or she wanted to convey yet has the freedom to find a different meaning.  Art is about having the freedom to express yourself, whether it be a personal, political, or controversial thought, and can often times be the only means of sharing an idea that’s otherwise hard to express.  Evaluating art brings people to the task of finding their own definition of beauty which is such a subjective idea that draws on personal experience and beliefs.

"Woman Combing Her Hair" (1886) Degas

If I try to define clearly what art IS, it becomes possible to start pointing out what art ISN’T. Therefore, I would define art as broadly as possible. Art is a tangible object, a movement, a sound, an image, or an outpouring of thought that has been produced by some human effort, however small. Art cannot exist in a vacuum, and, like an historical fact, is more meaningful when considered in context.  For example, Beethoven’s symphonies are more meaningful in the context of his deafness and his legless piano. Art is also the means by which we find beauty in seemingly mundane acts and simple human rituals (Degas, above).  It can be an artist’s means by which to make sense of his surroundings.  Art can project the artist’s intention and at the same time allow the observer to gain something entirely unique and personal.

This quote is from an Emerson reading for a class I’m taking called “Literature of the American Renaissance.”

Art is creativity, and Emerson defines creativity as follows:

“…genius looks forward: the eyes of men are set in his forehead, not in his hindhead: man hopes, genius creates….There are creative manners, there are creative actions, there are creative words; manners, actions, words, that is, indicative of no custom or authority, but springing spontaneous from the mind’s own sense of good and fair.”

Basically, art comes from within!

For example in this attached clip of lady gaga, she walks into a press conference with a mask covering her face.  It causes a commotion because people aren’t quite sure why.  But after she calls it art it seems to make sense.  But before she called it art, the people there did not recognize it as art.  In order for something to be art, one must claim it as art.

Callesen - Down the River (Papercut)

Its ability to evoke strong feelings in people means that art is often a contentious subject (and prone to being discussed in convoluted language); an example would be the debate on whether mastery of technique, or intention alone, or both, make something ‘art’.

The element of craftsmanship, both in the artwork itself and in the conveyed meaning, is traditionally associated with art, and while not ubiquitous, often makes for a more fulfilling experience for the viewer and artist.

Callesen - Down the River (Detail)