class

I enjoyed making the mask the most.  I liked doing the research of all the different tribal masks.  I am really into tribes in South America and this project I found myself getting really into the research.  I think that this project would of been more fun to have the materials to create a real mask but Being a course online I did not have these materials readily available so I had to settle on a drawing.  I like using Angel.  Even my classes that art online often use Angel for just about everything so I was already familar with the program.  I have said this in a previous post already but I would try and move the fridays assigments to saturdays because of the people who work during the week and are crunched for time.  I would definetly keep the videos but maybe assign to only watch three at a time maximum because it is hard to watch so many and do revewis on them. The videos were very informative and some were more interesting and I didn enjoy that part of the course.  I would maybe delete having to write on other peoples weekly blogs.  I personally never went back and read what people said.  I think though critiquing some one elses work is a good idea for that one project just to learn how to do it.  I would recommed this course to people but I would definetley tell them to make sure they have time during the week to complete homework.  I would maybe take off less for late assigments.  I understand the need to keep deadlines and with online classes its probably harder however I think 25 points a day on a major assigment is high.  I think ten or 15 points would be just as effective and less discouraging.

final log

Mt expectations of this course ws to learn about art.  I felt it went more in depth into history of art and I was happy to see that.  Some of the information from the textbook I was able to use in discussiong art in Mexico for my one class.  I also think that some of the videos were very informative.  I wasn't really a fan of the interveiw ones however.  Art is everything around you, anything that can be open to intrepatation.  THis doesn't really go more indepth from the beginning of the year but I definetely know more about how to look at art including elemenets and principles and being receptive.  I didnt have a favorite artist when i started because i didnt know much about art.  I have a lot of artist I like now.  I enjoy the classical main artists but I do also enjoy Frido Kahlo.  I learned about her in my Mexico class as well.  I like the way she incorporates her emotions and her feelings towards deigo rivera her husband in several of the works.  I had the oppurtunity to study her as well as deigo rivera and the mural movement more in depth and i was very interested.  This particular online course had a lot of very specific deadlines through out the week and it was hard for me to meet them because of school work and children.  I thought it was going to be more leasurely.  I would of found it easier to have some of the friday assignments due on saturday.  I still prefer to take this course online however.

self portrait

I selected these images because like my picture, I do not have a happy face because I am mad about my grade and all of these pictures show a blank expression open for intrepitation.  I selected a pencil because it shows the blan and boringness in my mood at the time.  I used color, lack there of to express emotion.  I used dark lines to set a certain mood.  I used space and placed my self as the center of the picture.  I would of enjoyed this project more if I wasnt upset at the time.  This peice represents how frustrated I can become very easily.  I think my final artwork acheives my goal of anger, however I do not have the patience to draw and take the time needed to develop proportion.  Drawing is not something I probably will ever be good at.

art critique

I looked at everyones projects.  I thought it was interesting that we all came up with very different ideas.  Some topics were similar but everyone spun them on different angels.  I selected the project called Looking out my Window because it seemed to magical and relaxing.  I had trouble writing my critique because I think I was too nervous to write on other peoples thoughts.  I also didn't know where to start.  It would be interesting to read what other people thought of my work, afterall it did take me a while to complete it so it would be nice to know what other people thought about it.  I havent read many critiques written out about people so im not sure how mine compares.  I would probably give it a six becuase I know Im not very critical, I try to be too nice.  I enjoyed this project but I think that 25 slides was a bit long.  The actual putting it together took a very long time.  I think we could have obtained the same experience with picking about 15 slides.

week 15

The first two videos I watched on the interviews on Greenburg and Pollock I must admit were hard to pay attention to.  The monotone voice ruined it for me.  The first video tells us that writing on art is very hard,  It is much easier to write about topics such as music instead.  Greenburg supports modern art but he is very specific in saying that not every modern artist has proven themselves.  He was very adimit on saying that he did not want to generalize every modern artist.  I thought this was interesting because it not something you hear everyday, a person admitting there are some flaws in what they beleive in.   I didn't really feel that there was much i could both from this video for art critiscm.

The Pollock video was a little easier to obtain information.  He talks about the emerging of modern art and the fading of traditional art.  He talks about the shift from tradtional aisle painting to the mural paintings explaining that aisle painting is dead.  One think that I thought was interesting in this video was the fact that they said there is no explaination of what really makes a painting a sucess.  I must admit sometimes there are artworks I look at and wonder what people where thinking yet they are extremly famous. 

I thought the video on the Reniansance was interesting because it was done through story telling and it was something different.  This video was very factual and I learned a lot about the different Reniansance artist.  While I could read Giorgio Vasaris, Lives of the Artists to obtain this imformation, I prefer the video.  My favorite artist this movie talked about was Giberti.  The artwork that he does on the door panels in outstanding.  The attention to human detail is amazing.  I did not realize that they took 21 years to create, I imagined it took a great deal of time but that just seems like forever.

The next video I feel can be used in the project because it has o do with critiscm.  Many critics pick to write about what is poluar in mainstream and I think to be a successful art curator you may have to pick something that would appeal to people coming to visit your gallery.  I liked also how they compared critics to reporters becuase in a sense they go with the flow and the demand.  Unfortunately critics pick items that would appeal to the masses over some uncommon topics and if you are one of the ones who like the rare topics there may not be that much information for you. 

The next video caught my attention again because it dealt with history.  In the video we learn how the French had such power and influnce in its art, that it was able to creat steritypes for the African and Arab culture.  The mad people think that African from the Dahome area were violent, nieve and barbaric.  They made the Arab women look very sexual and exotic and in a sense gave a negative image to them.  One thing that we touched base on in the last videos was the studying of indigenous people.  Inthe previous movie they too claimed that they were studying bodies for sceince.  The part that differed in this video is that the people they were studying were alive and that they were naked and exploited.  This video can be used as a lesson that the artworks you pick for you gallery with give the audience a certain tone in the back of their mind about the topic and you should take that into consideration when picking your art works. 

The last video again was an interview that couldnt really catch my attention.  It was on Jackson Pollock the father of modern art.  He is famous over the contraversy in his painting Lavendar mist.  It is said to represent human beings.  My mind is not open enough to intrpret spaltter paint to a human being.

week 13?

The first video that I watched was the lowdown on lowbrow.  I learned that the term was once used to describe art that was used with pornography but is now associated with art that nobody knows how to categorize.  The term lowbrow was invented by a man named Richard Williams.  The art that is included generally includes pictures of women and hot rods.  Lowbrow is also used in rock posters often in the 60s with a mixture of psychedelic art.  This period would rise after WWII.  This was because people began to fear the unknown.  I enjoyed this film and it did help me to open my eyes on what to do with art that goes against the grain but it did not help me with my project because I have such a specific topic.  This video was very interesting to learn about the artwork that you may not normally think of, such as artwork on posters.

The second video that I had watched was the Tate approach.  The Tate gallery was so popular that it had received a million visitors in a few month period.  There is controversy about this museum because it lacks important parts of chronology.  It focuses on British art and lacks western influences as well as female artists.  One of the aspects of the video was useful in creating the project in that it shows peoples responses to artworks that are placed in a room together that are not from the same period or same medium.  There was one room that contained traditional art and modern art and it supposedly desgined that way to make you think of the parallels between the artwork.  I think that this showed me that viewers can be confused or get frustrated or offended if it is done this way.  This video was more of an art gallery tour and I prefer more historical videos like the Indian one.

The next video on the Native Americans was my favorite.  It was about the laws that were made to prevent archeologist from keeping remains of Native Americans as well as important artifacts in rituals.  This movement started in Iowa and would spread across the country.  I was not surprised to hear that the collection of skulls was collected to prove that the caucasion race was superior.  I was however shocked that during that time that they believed that Native Americans were above African Americans.  Native Americans were forced to live on reservations while African Americans could live within the society inventiually.  I just thought that the scientist would have them the lowest ranking.  I do not believe in a superior race, I was just shocked that how he justified it.  I also liked the tribal affiliations and how the Native Americans refuse to believe science.  Migration patterns were in the beginning of being discovered with the uses of genes in bones in Native American but then was made illegal.  This did not really help with the project I thought, at least directly but I feel that it helps to explain to us as to why there are such limited artworks out there now that pertain to Native Americans.  It also shows us was to why pieces like pottery which are considered art are not in museums as much because if it was used in ceremonies, Native Americans can have it back.

The last video I watched was the George Eastman House.  I was not aware that such an important part of history as well as art was so close to Buffalo.  I think that this video has made an impact on me as the viewer and I would like to visit it.  This pointed out to me that there is more to art then the usual and that film should be considered.  I did learn in the book about film but I guess until this video I did not think to choose this as a topic for my project.  One quote that I enjoyed form this video being a history buff is that by displaying and keeping certain videos it shows people in the future was a culture what we value and then maybe they can understand us.  The collection contains a huge variety of films from the century including silent films, operas and even King Kong films.  This house was all made possible by George Eastman the father of popular photography.  He invented motion picture films as well as the first affordable personnel camera.  I really enjoyed this film.  It showed me the importance of preserving and restoring art.

art gallery

I went to the Burchfield Penny Art Gallery for this assignment.  This assignment was a little different that the last one because I had to focus on space, architecture and lighting.  There we two major types of lighting in this gallery.  The front of the gallery used a lot of natural lighting from the ceiling as well as some big windows found throughout the gallery.  For the most part threw the gallery there were individual lights pointing on the pictures.  The walls were white for the more modern art and dark grey in the rooms with the older collections.  I noticed several pillars in the middle of the buildings and beautiful wooden staircases for some of the architecture.  The museum was set up so that it flowed for you to walk through.  There wasn’t much option as to which direction to go, it seemed to me that it was designed for you to walk a certain way.  One thing I did notice as far as space is that the ceilings were extremely high.  Some of the rooms had works of art hanging from the center from the high ceilings.  The art work was for the most part evenly spaced out.  I thought it was odd that some of the art work was hung so high that you really good not get a good look to analyze and interpret it.  Most of the artwork was not individually labeled.  The name of the artist would be on the wall and sometimes there would be one sign for all the artworks.  Most of the modern art work did not have frames.  The room with the older artwork had old elaborate bronze thick frames.  I feel the gallery can be broken into old and new.  The older artworks were similar in that they contained usually a self portrait or a picture related to wars going on.  They differed in that they picked different topics on wartime to focus on.  The modern art in the gallery different because some of it was three dimensional, some of the artwork was photography.  Other consisted of collages and some were drawings and paintings.  Each room had a specific theme.  The proximity of the artwork varied in different parts of the museum.  Some rooms only had one picture on a wall, usually in the center.  Other walls contained pictures evenly spread out, one following the other.  The artworks that hung from the ceiling generally were in the center of the room.  One of the exhibitions I passed was the exhibition cabinetry design.  There was a lot of pottery and plates in the cabinets with war themese painted on them.

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In this water color painting I see a house that is extremely old.  To the side of the house there is a barn.  Both the house and the barn are surrounded by trees.  With in the trees there is an owl.  There is a wide open feild with trees further in the background.  This painting by Charles Burchfeild is not a realistic one.   This paitning reminds me of something scary.  Burchfeild uses space to empahsize the house.  He also uses colors that depict old and frightening tones.  The trees do not appear to be in proportion to the house.

This spray painting is of a garbage pile.  There is a pond in the front that shows the refelction.  This very well could exist in real life.  The artist uses rythm and repeats the same thing over.  He also uses light in the reflection of the pond to empahize how large it really is.  He also uses dull colors to show how the site is gloomy.  I think the artist is trying to get you to realize how much garbage there can be found everywhere and I feel that this painting is effective.  I think the medium  of spraypaint that was used also represents clutter and filth becuase of the negative image spray paint carries.

This particular artwork is literally just a hermit crab on top of a rocket ship.  This artwork is inside a cage with out a top, almost like a crib.( didn't capture the whole picture in my image)  The artist choose all white ceramic for this artwork.  This can symbolize the symblicity of the message she is trying to convey.  The symbolism beheind this is that a person or hermit crab is often viewed to be from another world.  I believe this is what the artist is trying to get across.  This sculture is one of three in the exhbit that have similar meanings about people who are seen as hermit crabs.  The sculpture is placed in side an empty cage with nothing around it.  The space also emphasizes the simplicity.