This week I solidified what I wanted to do, and began sketching out my drawing on pencil.
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I decided what I wanted to draw for my next project, but did not have very much time to work on it due to only having only 1 day of class this week and working primarily on sketchbook things during that time.
I turned in my completed home project, but have not had any class time to begin my next in-class project due to having been absent from class on Monday.
One day when I was scrolling on the internet, I came across the piece on the top right, Death of a Cyborg by Shorra. At first glance, the piece looks like something painted by an old master, but the subject matter was something very modern, and I thought it was incredibly cool. This made me look further into it, and as it turned out, Shorra actually used a painting by William Bouguereau, The First Mourning, (left) and added the cyborg enhancements to the middle figure. On Shorra's deviantart, they give credit to Bouguereau, but since I originally saw a repost of the work somewhere else, it took some research to realize that Death of a Cyborg wasn't the original. It's a stunning, thought-provoking piece which combines classical and modern elements in an interesting and subversive way, but it isn't the original piece.
This whole issue started me thinking about the fact that I saw Death of a Cyborg reposted from where Shorra originally posted it online, and how important it is to properly credit the art that people post. Had I not looked further into it, I would have thought that this was a completely original work not based off of something else, and I'm sure that out of the thousands of people who liked or shared the post I saw, not very many took the time to do any sort of research. This piece also got me thinking about using another artist's work as either inspiration for your own work, or incorporating part of it into your own work, and whether or not that's alright. Of course, Shorra credited Bouguereau with The First Mourning, but was posting Death of a Cyborg on its own the right thing to do? Was it alright for Shorra to post it as "Death of a Cyborg" instead of "Edited Version of The First Mourning"? To be completely honest, I'm not sure what my answer to this question would be, but this piece is incredibly thought-provoking in more ways than one. Rubin Enyon, Gallos, bronze, 8 ft tall, 2016 I saw a post about this work on tumblr, and I immediately fell in love with how cool this sculpture looked. This sculpture, Gallos, was created by Rubin Enyon in 2016 and installed in Tintagel, England, what is the believed birthplace of the legendary King Arthur. Despite this, however, Enyon has stated before that the work isn't just a statue of King Arthur, but it is also inspired by the past of England and specifically Tintagel Castle, which the sculpture was installed near.
I really like this piece because despite it being so new, it somehow manages to look old, and like it's been a part of the landscape for years. The bronze looks weathered, and the strategically placed holes in the sculpture make it seem as if it is deteriorating as ancient ruins do. This also makes the sculpture seem to blend in better with the landscape. It almost looks like the figure is some sort of ancient guardian of Tintagel who has been there for hundreds of years, both because of how weathered it looks, and the stance the figure is holding. Especially in that picture of the sculpture in the fog makes the entire stature look ethereal, and almost magical. I can't come up with anything that I really dislike about this sculpture, and I would love to see it in person. 10/25/17 at VCU
This quarter I was lucky enough to be able to go with Ms. Mosley and some classmates to see Mark Dion's lecture at VCU. I'd never really heard of Mark Dion before this lecture was mentioned in class, and aside from the tiny bit we discussed in class, I had no idea what kind of art Dion created before going to this. But I have to say that now that I've seen it, I'm a fan. The kind of art that Dion creates isn't what most people would think of as "art", and the kinds of exhibitions he puts up challenge people's traditional notions as well as pose the question: what makes something art? I think that the intent behind doing something makes it art, if the piece or project is idea-driven more than anything else. And not only did Dion manage to create things that looked amazing, but the ideas behind his work were so interesting too. One of my favorite works of his that he talked about was one where he and a team of people searched the foreshore of the Thames River in London twice a day for a couple weeks and collected artifacts and objects that had been left in the river by human beings. He then set all of the artifacts up in somewhat of a small museum for people to look at. The exhibit, however, was made to challenge the viewer and subvert the whole idea of a "museum" in the first place. What is a museum? And can it still be a museum without any object labels, or a hundred different methods of object organization in one room? In addition to this, Dion talked about how his team found objects from both modern day, as well as things from medieval times, hundred of years ago that had remained in tact. He was also interested in exploring the effects or traces of human life which have been left in nature and in the world. His work in Norway and Venice also echo this idea. But it was just so amazing to me that Dion managed to find objects from hundreds and hundreds of years ago, and then he managed to put together an aesthetically pleasing exhibit that people could look at and interact with. People could touch and look at these objects from so long ago alongside modern objects as if it were nothing. I was very interested in the archaeological and sort of historical artwork that Dion did (although his other projects were also super interesting and amazing), and when thinking about it I realized that so far this year, both big projects I've worked on have been somewhat historically-based, with me having drawn Nicolae Ceausescu and Kim Il-Sung. I've also tried to somewhat subvert the viewer's expectation of pictures of these dictators by smudging both pictures to show that their perceived invincibility was fake. But the more I think about it, my work so far has shared some similarities with some of Dion's, and it was interesting to see how some of these things were shown in a completely different way. Class Project: I finished my class project, both drawing and shading then smudging my piece to finish it.
Home Project: I haven't worked on this as much as I would have liked to do to how much schoolwork I had due this week, but the drawing is completely planned out, and I've begun with the gridding and basic outline. |
AuthorA senior at Maggie Walker taking Art IV Archives
May 2018
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