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.