“Lucy there is some great reflection here - im not sure I agree with some of your premises about Art. Expression assumes some sort of knowledge - intuitive a priori or otherwise. I think many artist make art as a way of trying to understand the world / themselves. Maybe its useful to think about the distinction between the art work and the artist?”—James
I’ll agree that expression does have some knowledge behind it. Here I define knowledge as reaction/understanding of stimuli. For example, you eat a jalapeno and find that it is extremely spicy. That’s knowledge. There’s this artist I follow on DeviantArt, `yuumei, who is a great example of this knowledge behind expression. She has an animation series that deals with the reality of divorcing parents and how the children of these parents deal with their emotions and come to terms with the split.
The first of the series is a flash game, which is actually an interactive storybook. I went through every possible scenario and it’s quite depressing for me. You can really understand the feeling she expresses inside the story. It doesn’t matter what scenario you choose the story always ends the same way: The child can’t do anything about their parents splitting up and must accept that there’s nothing they can do. When the player goes through the game you feel really frustrated because you want the parents to get back together but it never works out.[1]('yuumei, 2011) I think this is how many children feel about their parents splitting up.
The second is more like a manga, but in a different format and with a few stylistic differences. This one’s really depressing too. The story is structured very much like a manga and the characters are typical in manga, which keeps with the style of the art. The art inside it is really beautiful.[2]('yuumei, 2009) Even though it’s digital art it conveys the emotions really well. I’ve seen a lot of digital art and when you’re exposed to vast amounts of it you start to see the differences because you’ll have more to compare to. From what I’ve seen, it’s rare to find a digital art piece that really moves me. This is one of those rare ones, by the end of the story you’ll be bawling your eyes out.
Her parents are divorced and she receives many letters from other people who follow her who also have divorced parents. So in her artworks she expresses those emotions according to her own personal experiences and the experiences of many other children. It has been a key theme in several of her pieces. This is really off topic but people should really think twice before getting married. It’s never just about you.
Back on track. Her art with the theme of divorce fully expresses her feelings and the feelings of others towards divorce, which comes from her understanding and knowledge of what divorce is like.
If it were me I don’t think I can make art as effective as hers about divorce and what it’s like for the child because I haven’t experienced it myself. I could ask my friends as many questions as I want, but I still wouldn’t be able to capture the feeling.
I think the flaw in my last post is that I sort of cut out the artist in my consideration of what expression is. I probably cut out the mathematician as well. This makes me think though. For some reason art feels more human than mathematics does for me. There will probably be more on that in a later post.
Anyway, fast forward to today’s lecture.
In today’s lecture there were quite a few topics that caught my attention. I’ll talk about the two most important ones that stood out to me. The first is digital art missing human qualities and the second is constant analysis versus intuition in art-making.
I disagree with the statement that digital art lacks human qualities. I think it depends on a few things. How the art is made, the purpose of the art, and the meaning behind it as interpreted by the viewer. Some digital artworks do lack that sense of humanity. There are scores of examples for that where you have a perfect, hyper-photorealistic digital painting except that it’s made to look extraordinarily beautiful and perfect. Problem? It’s only trying to be beautiful and doesn’t really convey any emotion. I don’t want to mention any names for negative examples in case the artist finds it and sets their fans on me to flame the page. But an example is one particular artist draws exceptionally beautiful people. All the time these beautiful people look directly at the viewer, trying to look as beautiful as possible. The purpose of it is to simply be beautiful, digital eye-candy with no other deep meaning behind the artwork. As much as I like my eye-candy it does get boring after a while because the interaction and sharing of emotion isn’t there.
`yuumei’s art definitely doesn’t lack human qualities as shown by previous examples of her work. I think a lot of the emotion there is conveyed through the types of brushstrokes in her pieces. Even in the interactive storybook where they’re just silhouettes there are brushstrokes in the child’s silhouette to show what they’re feeling. For example, at one point there are really scribbly strokes where the child has to choose which parent to go with. It shows those feelings of not knowing what to do because what’s actually happening conflicts with what you want. I think in that one the use of typography and its movements showed that emotion really well too.
Constant analysis versus intuition in art-making; this really caught my attention. It caught my attention because I think this is a key point in studio which I find hard to balance. In the lecture, I think it was James who said that when you constantly analyse it’s hard for the art to grow and develop. I fully agree with that, and I think that’s one part I struggle with. I tend to plan everything out meticulously and make sure that there’s enough time for everything to go wrong. I have to be in control and know exactly what’s happening at every point along the way. I think I analyse too much to be honest. By over-planning it stunts the development of some of my projects. I need to let go and go with the flow; just let things happen. I want to improve on this aspect because I think it would benefit me greatly in the studio.
NOTE: There are no pictures of `yuumei’s work directly on this blog out of respect for the artist. You can click on the links to see her amazing work though.
The artists we were shown had cool art too. My favourite one was Yayoi Kusama’s. I didn’t know it at the time, but I’ve seen one of her mirrored rooms on the internet before when I was looking for mirrored rooms.[3](Bunyan, 2009) I love the infinity effect in mirrors facing each other. I actually have a dream mansion, in which there is a mirror garden which gives infinity in all directions. The mansion changes all the time when I change. Enough about the mansion, here’s one of her fantastic mirrored rooms!
I’ve been thinking about our literary review as well. I’ve looked up on how to write a literary review, which is a start. I’m now thinking of topics and according to my plan I should have chosen a topic by next Monday at the latest. Things I’m really keen about for the review are infinity, Islamic art and math, golden ratios and golden spirals, Renaissance art and math, Leonardo da Vinci—and I’m sure there’s more that I haven’t picked out yet at this moment.
[1] 'yuumei. (2011). Rumination. Retrieved July 25, 2011, from http://yuumei.deviantart.com/art/Rumination-215250277?q=gallery%3Ayuumei%2F100590&qo=1
[2] 'yuumei. (2009). 1000 WORDS. Retrieved July 25, 2011, from http://yuumei.deviantart.com/gallery/#/d23ifgd
[3] Bunyan, M. (2009). Exhibition: 'Yayoi Kusama: Mirrored Rooms' at Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA). Retrieved July 25, 2011, from http://artblart.wordpress.com/2009/03/14/yayoi-kusama-mirrored-rooms-exhibition-at-museum-of-contemporary-art-mca-sydney/
No comments:
Post a Comment