Cindy Sherman Transformations

Cindy Sherman Transformations

Cindy Sherman

Cindy Sherman

Cindy Sherman is a contemporary artist who explores modern identity. She works as her own model in different character forms from amusing to disturbing provocative to elegant. She uses a lot of makeup prosthetics wigs and clothes to create these different characters and then photographs them herself. She gets her inspiration from films, T.V, magazines the internet and history to influence her characters. They come from her own dreams and desires of being somebody completely different.

Lotte Reiniger

The art of Lotte Reiniger

This is a video about the artists technique on her shadow play animation. is goes through the steps and techniques to create her unique animations. although it is a simple idea it is amazingly effective with no speech in her work it is still easy to understand the story. This is one of my favourite animation techniques and Lotte Reiniger is the founder of shadow play. We are experimenting with this technique in my animation class as our final project so i have been researching a lot on her. She is very interested in fairytales and has done Hansel and Gretel shadow play animation along with any others.

Lotte Reineger

Papageno By Lotte Reiniger

Lotte Reiniger - (Link To Website) is an animation artist that adapted the art of shadow play to cinema. Her technique is so original and unique to her she was the founder of this animation technique. She cuts out silhouetted characters into sections so each arm hand and legs are all separate pieces of paper helps with the movement of the figure.She pierces small holes in relevant places and are then connected with small wire hinges so the arm, hands, legs and head can move freely. once the character is completed she can move him to a lit animation table to start creating shadow play animation. The figures are then slowly moved and a photo is taken then moved a fraction more then photographed and so on, after a lot of patience and time the figure moves bit by bit eventually creating an animation of papageno the bird catcher. This technique is such a simple idea but very intricately made needed with lots of patience. 

Semiotics Of The College Student

Semiotics Of The College Student

I found this video on youtube where someone has copied the video of Martha Rosler's "Semiotitcs Of The Kitchen" and changed it to a video about "Semiotics Of The College Student". This is video displays shallow stereotypical objects that are seen as typical college student life. I thought it was good because it is stereotypical student activities that explain student life like alcohol and Facebook and it has a bit of humour to the video. 

Semiotics Of The Kitchen

Semiotics Of The Kitchen By Martha Rosler

semiotics of the kitchen is about a woman going through the letters of the alphabet of utensils in the kitchen. The video displays the kitchen in a stereotypical home showing a traditional female role. But Rosler has injected a sense of violence into the video by stabbing the air or table with some of the utensils she's displaying. She has replaced the typical domestic meanings of the kitchen and changed it into a video with actions of violence and frustration. "when the woman speaks, she names her own oppression." - Martha Rosler 1975 http://www.ubu.com/film/rosler_semiotics.html

The typical signs of domestic instruments, the food production company and the stereotypical role of the domestic housewife progresses to anger and violence which is portrayed in this video. I also found another video inspired by "Semiotics Of The Kitchen" called "Semiotics Of The College Student" which is showing what typical college students are grounded to.

Martha Rosler

Martha Rosler

Martha Rosler -(Link To Website)

Martha Rosler's most recognizable work is her photomontages, collaging the domestic lives of women, war and politics. She has also done some video art "Semiotics Of The Kitchen" 

Martha Rosler started off as a painter and had an interest in photography at the same time. She started thinking about how you could have "..... on one page you could have a picture of some terrible atrocity of war and on the next page they'll be an ad for a sofa, and i got the idea to put them together...." - Martha Rosler Cut and Paste Video 

This is how she got the idea for her photomontages by looking at newspapers and how they can have adverts next to images of war and death. The contrast between lives and culture. She is completely outraged by war and she started montaging about the war in Afghanistan like when she did work about the war in vietnam. She is saying that we are deluding ourselves with these adverts of everyday things and how perfect and beautiful everything is at home and yet we invade other homes and destroy them. She says "... we are responsible for this, this is us telling ourselves that life is beautiful at home and this is what we do abroad." - Martha Rosler Cut And Paste Video. 

 

Link To Cut And Paste Video

 

Barbara Kruger

Barbara Kruger

Barbara Kruger-(link to website) is a Graphic designer that layers found photographs that are typically recognisable with black bold letters against a red background with text that has aggressive meanings, which makes viewers question ideas about consumerism, feminism, classism and desire to want. She is protesting against magazines that advertise the things she is aggressing against. However her work has appeared in museums, galleries, billboards, posters etc and a campaign for Selfridges. Either she's doing it because it is the perfect setting for her work and Selfridges want a different approach on advertising. it's almost like Selfridges is having a joke at customers expense by advertising these anti-consumersim slogans and yet people still shop mindlessly and probably not too sure of the meaning of these slogans and just don't care. 

Slinkachu

Slinkachu

Slinkachu - (Link To Website) Is an art installation photographer who works with his project "The Little People Project" which involves him remodelling train set characters and placing them around the city in different scenarios. He does this because he wants to send a message to people living in a big city to be more aware of their surroundings, reflecting the loneliness of living in a city feeling lost and alone. He also projects some humour into his work which makes it more relatable to the audience. I like how original his work is and it has an honest reflection of how life can be living in a big city feeling overwhelmed and lost. He wants people to take more notice of their surroundings, it is a simple effective way of portraying this message to city dwellers. All his scenarios are very creatively made using rubbish you find scattered around the city and transforming it into a clever everyday scenario. 

Miss Van

Miss Van

Miss Van - (Link to Website) is a french graffiti artist who uses acrylic in her work instead of spray cans because she prefers working in that medium. She publishes her work this way because she thought that her work would be more accessible to the public this way. She also found working on the street  more exciting because it's forbidden and keeps a sense of freedom in her work of her sultry female dolls. Miss Van's work is very unique and original because there are not very many female graffiti artists who work in this style and is not a typical technique of graffiti which makes her unique. She represents herself through her dolls they are like self portraits of the artist. As she started moving into gallery work her dolls became more sexually alluring and often very provocative because she wants them to disturb people and entice fantasies and generally create some reaction to her work.

Modernism
By
Peter Childs

Modernism

I took out this book from the library to help me out with understanding modernism which I have come to understand a bit easier after reading some of the book. However it is mainly talking about modernist writing and literature but was helpful in defining modernism and postmodernism. Modernism is art that Harold Rosenberg calls "The art of the new" so it is very experimental, complex and shows a lot of freedom that artist has from realism, materialism and traditional art techniques, artists such as Picasso. 

Ione RucQuoi

  Ione Rucquoi

Ione Rucquoi's -(link to website) work exposes the lost innocence and primal instincts of the human nature. She explores the dark side of human emotions by exposing them physically through the photographs. Her main focus is the existence of humans Birth, Life, Death and the beast we all have within. She wants people viewing her work to have their own personal response to the images as they are a reflection of her own experiences and how she feels is right to portray those emotions. She is exploring a very complex idea of human existence and how experiences no matter what, we have to go through and how it changes our perspective on things.
At first glance of this artist her work comes across as very dark and disturbing, however they project certain emotions that the viewer can relate to once you understand her work and the deeper messages behind the photos. She transforms the human figures to project the beast within or some form of experience. 

Julia Fullerton-Batten

Julia Fullerton-Batten

Julia Fullerton-Batten-(link to website)

is a fine art photographer that has a very unique style on one of my favourite projects "Teenage Stories" which explores the transition of young girls into womanhood. She explores this idea with the girls miniaturising their surroundings becoming the main focus of the photo. This shows the girls losing their innocence and becoming away of adult life leaving childhood behind and becoming a women. in the photos the girls show no real emotion almost like their in a dream like they are not really there just existing in their confusing transition from child to adult girl to woman. I particularly like this photographer because she deliberately avoids models and chooses random girls, this creates a more unique style because it exposes the slight awkwardness they have with the camera which makes the photos more believable and real. They also make it easier to relate with how the girls are feeling because it's not so posed its very natural.She has done many other projects but this one is my favourite because it is a very unique way of exploring transitions we all go through form child to adult. 

Anthony Micallef

Anthony Micallef 

Anthony Micallef - (link to website) is one of my favourite artists. His work is based on our relationship with consumerism and how it effects us and social society. He creates his pieces using paint working often with bright, childlike colours, although they are exposing the darker side of consumerism and how it's effecting society. His work exposes how we are branding ourselves with these companies and letting ourselves be seduced by these big multi national companies.  

I find this artist has a real honest message in his works because he is exposing how we've become ruled by brands and letting them define who we are as people and a society. we are losing our individuality to these companies and letting the media control how we should dress, eat and think by reading magazines and watching t.v that are telling you what's in to wear and what's not. The media has a very heavy and almost unavoidable influence that effects how we want to look to how we should look according to the media. He explores these ideas and creates some really beautiful paintings with very dark messages behind them. 

Feminist Art Movement

The Feminist Art Movement

Female artists were not acknowledged before this movement began, their experiences as artists were ignored in addition to male artists and they called for a revolution. They created a group (WAR), women arts in revolution, because the male artists would not protest on behalf of the women. WAR began protesting against galleries for not exhibiting their work because it was all male based art and the women were not aloud to train as artists or exhibit their work. They demanded that female art be considered into exhibitions and studies from all cultures and periods. In 1971 a contemporary art critique named Linda Nochlin wrote an Article called Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists? - (Web Link To Article) she writes "Why have there been no great women artists?" The question tolls reproachfully in the background of most discussions of the so-called woman problem. But like so many other so-called questions involved in the feminist "controversy," it falsifies the nature of the issue at the same time that it insidiously supplies its own answer: "There are no great women artists because women are incapable of greatness."
The assumptions behind such a question are varied in range and sophistication, running anywhere from "scientifically proven" demonstrations of the inability of human beings with wombs rather than penises to create anything significant, to relatively open minded wonderment that women, despite so many years of near equality and after all, a lot of men have had their disadvantages too have still not achieved anything of exceptional significance in the visual arts." 
I enjoyed reading this article because I found it interesting how things have changed for female artists they were deemed inferior for their art and general existence because they were women although still human. Some of the greatest artists have been female and I think accepting all types of art is important because women have experiences that men will never understand and vice versa. But because they are female their work was ignored.

Guerilla Girls

Guerrilla Girls!

Guerrilla girls! -(Link to website) "We're a bunch of anonymous females who take the names of dead women artists as pseudonyms and appear in public wearing gorilla masks. We have produced posters, stickers, books, printed projects, and actions that expose sexism and racism in politics, the art world, film and the culture at large. We use humor to convey information, provoke discussion, and show that feminists can be funny. We wear gorilla masks to focus on the issues rather than our personalities. Dubbing ourselves the conscience of culture, we declare ourselves feminist counterparts to the mostly male tradition of anonymous do-gooders like Robin Hood, Batman, and the Lone Ranger. Our work has been passed around the world by kindred spirits who we are proud to have as supporters. It has also appeared in The New York Times, The Nation, Bitch and Bust; on TV and radio, including NPR,, the BBC and CBC; and in countless art and feminist texts. The mystery surrounding our identities has attracted attention. We could be anyone; we are everywhere."The Guerrilla Girls Website.


I found the guerrilla girls while i was researching Lynn Hershman Leeson and was really interested in finding out more about them by visiting their website. They fight for female artists rights also known as feminists and how the feminist art revolution changed art for women, however they still continue to fight. They are just a rally strong female anonymous group who are really passionate about issues regarding female artists. 

Lynn Hershman Leeson

T.V Legs 

Lynn Hersman Leeson

Lynn Hersman Leeson -(Link to website) is a multimedia artist working in film, photography, installations and video. I looked up her website and found that she works a lot with female identity and the issues that come with it and the relationship we have have with technology and privacy in the era of surveillance. I found her work interesting because of what she investigates in her work. One of the series she has created is "Phantom Limbs" which is the merge of female bodies with technical limbs and features. She incorporates T.vs, cameras and lenses giving it a very dehumanising effect. These black and white photomontages express her feelings towards how much we rely on technology and media and how we are losing ourselves to the advance of technology, It invades our lives psychologically and physically. using this technique of photomontage and the idea of the invasion of technology and the effect it has on us creates quite disturbing images and cyborg figures.  I really like her work but this is particularly my favourites pieces of work she's done by attacking he media and technology in a way that shows how dehumanising it is and the effect media and technology is starting to have on us. It's a complex message which she has done really well and a a really creative way of expressing her concerns with the future and constant advancing of technology and power the media has over us.  

Woman art revolution

women art revolution By Lynn Hersman

Identity

Who am I?

Photograph By Lynn Hersman Leeson 

Identity is what the person is, who am i? is what people ask themselves through time and each person creates their own identities making each of us different from the other. identity involves inside and outside, personal and social who we are socially creates an identity. I was reading a book called "Understanding Identity" by Kath Woodward which has helped me understand a lot about identity and social identity, Ervin Goffman is mentioned in the book. I researched him and found his book "Presentation of the self in everyday life" and he talks a lot about social identity. 

"Understanding Identity" talks about how understanding identity can lead to understanding the social and how we present ourselves to others. 

"identity offers a way of thinking about the links between the personal and the social..." (page vii)

I found this quite interesting because identity is closely related to the social, social identity, and how the media contributes to our identity. we see it on T.V and magazines, what makeup to buy or clothes to wear which shape us into creating an identity. However this is how the media and the social wants us to look a certain way when our identity should be a reflection of the self rather then copying something out of a magazine. so Identity can be misleading and not be an actual representation of the person as their identity may not be an honest reflection of the person.

We are also very protective of our identities, even obsessive like those who see faults in their image and go as far as cosmetic surgery to create a new face or body the way they imagine themselves to look.for instance people want to take control of their bodies by have the perfect figure and features "....just as, the slim athletic body may be used o signify success and an attractive identity, the impaired body may be represented as an indicator of failed identity..." (page 124)

There is a lot of pressure from the media about how men and women should look, seeing these tiny skinny women and strong athletic men can make people feel like they don't look right and see themselves as imperfect. The pressure of looking a certain way is broadcasted to people through the media and celerities, how they are criticised for not having the perfect "bikini body". However they go under tremendous stress to look their best because they are in the public eye and people look up to them. But they are not real they are trained and dieted to look how the media wants them to. For example this magazine is advertising how to look perfect by putting Rihanna on the front cover and revealing her secrets to a perfect body because it is desirable to how woman want to look. Identity is a hard thing to accept when you want to look a certain way and when your putting pressure on yourself by listening to the media and magazines it can become an obsession, however it is peoples right to choose how they want to look and if they want to be guided by the media then that's their choice, that is who they are. 

Postmodernism

By Richard Appignanesi & Chris Garratt
With Ziauddin Sarder
&
Patrick Curry

Postmodernism

I took out this book from the library to help me out on understanding postmodernism better. It explains the roots of Postmodernism over the last 100 years of art, History, Politics and Philosophy. I have found this book to be really helpful as it also covers a bit of modernism. 

The book is a graphic guide which makes it a lot easier to read and help with some of the understanding of Postmodernism. The book defines postmodernism by saying "What do you mean Postmodern? The confusion is advertised by the "post" prefixed to "modern". Postmodernism identifies itself by something it isn't. it isn't modern anymore.." 

It also explains it by defining the actual word "... latin origin of modern, modo, "just now". Postmodern therefore literally means "after just now"." so what i understood from that is it's not just now its after just now so it isn't modern it is after modern, the future. 

It also talks about "machine aesthetic" "...the role of abstraction in human life and an emphasis on machine-like, undecorated flat surfaces.Their aim was to form a universally applicable "modern style", reproducible anywhere, transcending all national cultures." This is a postmodern idea as it is talking about a machine based future rather then human so that everything can be reproduced through machine. 

Andy Warhol is also mentioned in the book because he turned mechanical reproduction into art representing that the only real human touch in his work is applied colour. everything else is done through printing onto canvas much like how a machine works.