Canonical Comic

          You have no control of the world of art that you have inherited but you do have a say about how you interpret works of art and relate to them.  There is a list of works of art recognized as art.  Although inclusion upon this list depends on the agenda of whom you ask why not develop your own criteria for what is art. The list is called the Canon of Art. 

          The Canon can be thought of as a barometer or measuring device. Think about what kind of criteria you would include and why certain pieces of art should or should not be considered "art". What makes a work of art good? How does it affect you? Does it move your friends in the same or in a different manner? 

          For your final project of the semester you are going to be appropriating from the Canonical underpinnings of our text combined with the works of art you brought into class presentations and the slides shown in class. Lift pieces of art out of the original context and create a comic or sequencial narrative about three scenes in your life. They can be from the past, present or your Nostradamus future. Include a few paragraphs explaining the meaning behind your composition. 

          How does giving a slice of art a new context alter the meaning? Bonus points if you can use the art in unexpected ways...  See if you can decipher the recontextualized and altered images from above. For example, did you notice Van Gogh's Sunflower is reshapened to create the Friends coffee shop floorboards? Definitely cool. Also Hokusai's Wave is turned upside down and made into a windy sky while Botticelli's Seashell, from Birth of Venus, was refashioned into weights for athletic training. Thats some impressively furtive appropriation.  

Birth of Quinnipiac

The outstanding work of 15 students and my mother, who just happened to be passing through town. Guess which one is Paddy's rectangle? Really, AR101, ya'll did a fantastic job. Your individual interpretations blend exciting... Botticelli would be thrilled.

Principles of Art & the Barococo...

Here is a diagram you can download and use as a worksheet to practice integrating the Principles of Art with the Baroque and Rococo period. Remember to think through how Baroque and Rococo artists each used the Principles of Art differently to reflect the culture of their time as well as often the agenda of those commissioning the art.

On the right are some questions to further deepen your mastery of the material before the exam. At this point you want to be asking yourself....

 "How are the Principles organizing what I am looking at?" 

You could be observing a building, a candy wrapper, perhaps a tree or the flight path of a bird. The Principles are in effect be it by human hand or nature. There is also some key terms parceled out from the Baroque and Rococo lecture to help identify some of the impetus behind many works of art of the time period. Enjoy...

The Medici & How To Draw The Renaissance

Here are several fine student examples of drawings completed to help focus the review for the Renaissance exam. Notice how the images are not titled but further cultural and connotative references are pointed out with notations. Combining these two disciplines: first drawing your own version of the compositions and secondly labeling their connection to their time helps adhere the image and their meanings to your memory. Check 'em out...

We moved quickly towards the end of class last week but we should not short change the economical aspect of the Renaissance. Especially the archetypal family who helped set the patronage tone. The Medici were the main financiers of the Renaissance. The impact they held emanated from their establishment as the most powerful banking and political family in Italy, a position they rooted for generations. Ambitious, cunning intellectuals, they were also obsessed with their public image and used their patronage of art and architecture to convey a complex, idealized, yet careful image of themselves and by extension their home city. Think Kennedy, the closest American equivalent of self image wrapped up into national image. The Medici tradition helped plant this model.

One of the major themes the Medici looked to convey was a blend of ancient Greek and Roman ideas within a Catholic narrative. Despite advancements in science and engineering, the mix of Humanism, spirituality and earthly power was seen by some as lofty and by others as controversial and decadent and eventually proved unstable. However the story of Renaissance ideas can be interpreted in the artists the Medici financed such as Michelangelo, Leonardo Da Vinci, Donatello and Botticelli.

Peep the movie below for a full disclosure...

The Visual Elements

To comprehend the Visual Elements of Art, get hungry... think: Sandwich of Composition.

We use the Visual Elements to build an appetizing composition. The Visual Elements are the same for drawing, painting, sculpture and architecture.

Here is a summary I distilled from the Seven Visual Elements lecture in class. Sometimes a playful mnemonic device helps to encode lists into memory.

Try "ShaC TeLLS Time"
Shape
Color
Texture
Line
Light
Time


Bon Appetite!

Renaissance: a Fresh Take

          Hello Art Historians... To follow up on our journey into the Renaissance, here are three videos which complement our discussions in class. With each video I am giving you questions to highlight the area where we are deepening our investigation. Feel free to post your own questions or any "ah-ha moments" in the comments section so I can help clarify or contribute to your interests as they root.

First off, take a look at the video on Botticelli's Birth of Venus and think about how Botticelli was weaving ancient Greek themes with the Christian narrative. Keep in mind how we have focused on the way cultures represent Gender Roles, as well as how particular figures seem to reemerge throughout history. Recall the Prehistoric Venus of Willendorf, the Ancient Assyrian representation of Ishtar, or the Egyptian evolution seen in the contrasting sculptures of Hatshepsut and Nefertiti.

In particular here: Think about how Botticelli's Venus suggests some aspects of the Greek goddess Athena as well as a Christian interpretation of Mary Magdalene...

  Botticelli's Birth of Venus: Botticelli, The Birth of Venus, 1483-85, tempera on panel, 68 x 109 5/8" (172.5 x 278.5 cm), Uffizi, Florence Speakers: Dr. Beth Harris & Dr. Steven Zucker
 

          As you peek the next video, write down each Element of Art you hear described. Ask yourself: How did Masaccio use each of the Elements of Art we studied to convey the narrative? For instance, Masaccio uses light in a realistic manner to emphasize the human qualities of Christ and the apostles rather than their symbolic roles. How are the other elements -- Shape, Color, Space, Line, Time and Weight -- employed?

Brunelleschi & Ghiberti, The Sacrifice of Isaac: Brunelleschi & Ghiberti, Sacrifice of Isaac, competition panels for the second set of bronze doors for the Florence Baptistery, 1401-2 Speakers: Dr. Steven Zucker and Dr. Beth Harris
_       Competition for patronage could be cut-throat during the 1500's. Winning a commission could make or break your studio. As you watch the video about the competition between Filippo Brunelleschi & Lorenzo Ghilberti in 1401 to win the Baptistery doors payroll, think back to our discussion in class.

          Several of you pointed out that in the depiction of the Sacrifice of Isaac one artist takes a darker point of view while the other composition appears more optimistic. This was a wonderful observation that is seldom spoken about. If you were one of the judges, how might the point of view have swayed your vote? Think about why you feel the way you do towards each piece. Why do you gravitate toward one composition over the other? Articulate the reasons you feel the way you do by pointing out the particular attributes of each piece that contribute to your reaction.

          Brunelleschi & Ghiberti, The Sacrifice of Isaac: competition panels for the doors for the Florence Baptistery, 1401-2 

The final video is about Brunelleschi's design of Florentine Dome atop Santa Maria del Fiore. The two historians give a solid portrayal of how Brunelleschi constructed the Dome but I want you to think about how the engineering feats echoed Brunelleschi's study of the ancients. In particular our man Vitruvius.

          Remember the Renaissance is a rebirth or resurgence of ancient sources. The artists, scholars and political leaders were not just looking to the past for surface visual inspiration but also as a complimentary source for attaching to larger meaning. Keeping this in mind, how does Brunnelleschi incorporate the Vitruvian ideas of firmitas, utilitas, venustas into his design? 

          Recall the name of the Florentine Cathedral in English: Saint Mary of the Flower. How does this dome, at the center of Florence, visually convey a floral motif?  Why was Vitruvius's ideas of humanity's relationship to nature such an important theme for Brunelleschi and other Renaissance Humanists including Leonardo da Vinci? Brunelleschi's Dome: Brunelleschi, Dome of the Cathedral of Florence, 1420-36 Speakers: Dr. Beth Harris and Dr. Steven Zucker

Thunderdust Logo Preview

It's blowing snow, ice and freezing rain today like it has been all January.  Icicles be getting gnarly.

Class is canceled and though I have got plenty of writing needing completion, all I can think about is how the snowfall is interfering with my soccer mojo. Probably drawing soccer is in hopes of making soccer happen: the following clip is of a logo still in process for our indoor team.

Check the back beat on the attached track which sorta sound like hooves galloping. I'm aiming to give the logo a few more clarifying shifts toward quicker Thunderdust legibility but for now you get the picture.


Sorta frustrating: blogger seems to be vaguely exclipsing the window along the right side of the video. To avoid this moon phase shift phenomena click on the clip and watch it via you tube. If anyone knows how to rectify the problem, do type!

Thoughts on Illustration

Thoughts On Illustration is an animation side project made with the Housatonic Community College Illustrators.



To create this font arrangement we hit up a technique called the Letter Lottery which is a process i developed for creating slightly unpredictable collaborative drawing results. Its a terrific generator of ideas by which to jump start metaphorical thinking because is located on the intersection of form and content.

In this film you’re witness to a group of people who don’t yet know one another but fairly open-mindedly took on the font design for the title to their composition notebooks. Committing to the project entailed twenty patient souls and several weeks and multiple consecutive all nighters learning Photoshop and iMovie.

We took on the project as part of an idea of participating in parallel or virtual Factory. The virtual factory being a response to the exhibition currently on display in The Housatonic Museum of Art entitled: In the Company of... Andy Warhol.

To plan a visit or learn more check out follow this link= http://www.hctc.commnet.edu/gen/news/press/2010/0805_warhol.asp

An added shout out goes to The Bird and The Bee whose song, 'Love Letter to Japan' provides an aural compliment to the visual composing. You can find out more 'bout them here= http://www.thebirdandthebee.com/main.aspx

Drivin' jPad

Sweet Home Chicago...  drivin' with my cousins and sis. Can you tell we're hungry? We're just about to stop for some Gino's Chicago Style Pizza because Bry drives just so damn fast. For those of you out East, Chicago style is sauce on top, go figure. Despite being backwards, it was tasty.  Drawing took about 45 minutes along hi-ways just shy of O'Hare on Tuesday, September 27th, 2010.

Whence upon a Burchfield...

Din Rumination

Din-Din Contemplation

KiKi goes Abstract

Smokin'

Elena captures the culprits

KiKi's Fishnets

Dial-a-laugh

M&K Contemplate their Move

Knight-kicker

Last weekend I went into the city to peep the Burchfields at the Whitney and hobnob with my homies. Burchfield was outta sight. A ton of watercolors are hanging, most of which are giant, many of which... gi-normous. 

Wholeheartily recommend you make your way there for a delightful show which includes everything from B's Yahtzee doodles and wall paper designs to his despondent, subconscious symbolism and poetic reflections. He really must of got under my skin as I began drawing immediately afterward and continued pretty much straight through dinner, conversation and cocktails afterward. Others got the bug too and the sketch eventually made its way into other hands and around the room. Above were some highlights... 

MLB, eat your heart out!

Check it out... a Wailing Wren. It came to me this morning. I awoke with it, (perhaps slept-wake is more apt) with the image both in profile and from afront. The pen gave me the more frontal image, inspired by preDisney black and white animations and a confused audience last night. When describing my fantasy baseball team to a friend, she misheard Whalley as Waily and it conjured such a powerful idea, it was hard to shake. I'm gonna color it soon, smooth it out a bit more and maybe even put it to a ball cap. Sick, huh? P.S. I don't play fantasy sports. I don't. Really.

Heads Up

While looking for images of Joseph Albers I came across a most unsual portrait of him.


















After digging slightly deeper I unearthed a whole array of portraits or as Andrew Taggart calls them, Head Studies. They're a terrific grouping and still being added too since 2006. Drawing with photographs can be difficult. The mediums have differing speeds and familiarity. To combine the two and get the medium to read well is a difficult feat. Taggart pulls it off well, not just getting the mediums to work in concert but also doing a fine interpreatation of his subject.

Check out this one of the Dalai Lama. He's got the responsibilities of Tibet and weight of China on his mind...
















Here's a pondering Albert Camus always on the scent on an existensial idea and a sneaky James Dean...




































I've always thought of Hemmingway as kinda a thug:






















And the Surrealist, Joan Miro. What's the rope for? He's certainly up to no good...






















You can tell Taggart likes the Dutchess of Windsor!





















Stravinsky, Mark Twain, maybe not so much...




































George Bernard Shaw is a headache























Georgia O'keefe is sorta out on her own, perhaps the New Mexican dessert making her feel a little isolated?
























Walter Benjamin, ever the blockhead.
























but Gertrude Stein, a dapper lady!


















Grace Kelly still has some edge to her:



















And Krishnamurti has a mountain in his lap.





















Taggart, the painter of these photographs, is Canadian but he's living in Norway. You can peep more of Taggart's work here. There are some intriguing installations as well as a set digital books which you can page through.


Lets leave on a Margaret Thatcher note

Hold On To Your Horses

70 Million by Hold Your Horses ! from L'Ogre on Vimeo.

In so far as appropriation, it doesn't get much better than this music video for the song 70 Million. A big shout out to a Quinnipiac AR101 student for hitting me on to this stunner so absolutely terrific I needed to break my blogaitus.

Caldor... rant, rave & shout out

I'm grooving on this drawing. An early one, exploratory both of the thing being depicted and in the manner of depiction. This sheet speaks to me. Lines like silhouettes only dimensional, appearing flat but also going within the form and puncturing and punctuating the outline making monkeys with more banana than banal in their personality.

Alexander Calder, better known for his mobiles (which hang in the foyer of nearly every major American museum touting the salt of its Modernist collection), was also a pretty smart draftsman. I don't mean to diminish Calder's mobiles, which are often cool; distaste derives more from the unimaginative way they're most often hung today.

Take the National Gallery of Art's East Wing in Washington, DC as an example. The entryway feels like a omniplex movie theatre and its opens up into a shopping mall like atrium. The hallway is designed to move people and it does so efficiently but at expense of one beauty of a Puryear. Nobody sees it because the environment functions as passage. Predictably, what do we find in the atrium but some hulking piece of art, in this case, its the Calder. Usually our boy is little more reserved and his pieces are silent birds, shifting like slow motion sattelites, overhead and asking us to tilt our heads and take in some sky.

Calder's mobiles, like giraffes, are cool and I totally would be psyched to live near one. On the other hand these iron space pterodactyls seem ubiquitous and curators strangle their potential by consistently headlining their entryways with their presence.

Enough, lets go back, get out of the museums, pre-1940's... before moving to Connecticut when Calder was a hobnobbing Parisian in the business of making circus. This more grounded Calder saved his flights for the pen and paper and this is what I'd like you to gander at now.


If you like that one, check this boxy, gridded one out. Near totally abstract and reorienting the viewer outta their seat and up from the perspective on top of the room...


This last circus one came after moving back to the states. It was done from the memory of the earlier ones and I believe was made to entertain some friends and his daughter. Its a broader statement about the circus but in some ways not quite as quirkily original as the other two. Its still cool but a little too book cover ready or circus poster dependent.


Another part of Calder's ouvre which should not be overlooked is his jewelry. This stuff is awesome and it feels just as much as if it were a drawing in space as it does a body ornament.


Calder also was a conspiracy theorist and is reported to have spotted aliens in Aix...


If you hear me mispronouncing, let me hit you on to this Caldor
RIP, my beloved DariNor Plaza

PS... Shout out to Strega-Cusano, who'll be cooking for the town of Greenfield and all-comers tomarrow from four till six pm