A day at the Menil

We took a trip to Houston to visit the menil museum. We were given a list of different types of art me had to find, sketch, and write a short description of each. The one thing on the list that I did not include in the thumbnails is the words copied from a Cy Twombly painting. I discovered a quote that spoke to me in the ponds collection; "and in the ponds broken off from the sky any feeling sinks as if standing on fishes"

Writing Assignment

a. The most enjoyable thing I saw would be the Ponds exhibit in the Cy Twombly building. The greenery made me feel like i was back home when I was little exploring the woods and marshes near my house. It made me happy and peaceful.

b. I didnt find anything that truely disturbed me. I have a very open mind when it comes to art. I try to go to the same mind place that the artist is portraying and try to see things their way. Where most people see a horrific painting, I put my place in the artists shoes and try to feel their pain.

c. A peice that I would like to try to create would be "6:30" by David Novras. The design shows merely a white group of canvases until you stand at 6:30 (like if there was a clock surrounding the peice) then all the colors that were intended for that peice come to life.

d. The peice that I would like to learn more about is the "Stereoscope" from the Wunderkammer collection. I collect many antique cameras and I almost came in possesion of one of these objects. They were the origional invention to view pictures and have always intrigued me.

e. I think the Cy Twombly building fit the artist best. It showed his peices from the 50s that were basically created from all his aimless thoughts thrown onto paper. Then as time progresses so does his artwork. It becomes sightly less stylized yet still includes his thoughts in the form of quotes throughout the paintings.

video projects 1, 2, and 3

We each made videos, the first a monolouge, the second an uncomfortable video, and the third was a live performance.

For my monolouge I sat in a little patch of clovers and did an "I love" video. to start off with I was just going to list a bunch of stuff I love but then Hunter told me to put him in my video so I decided to make my whole video about how much I love hunter (phht). I had little flash cards with pictures on that I would compare to how much I love hunter. I also had a Heart cutout that said I Love (and then stuck on last minute with a picture of a stick guy) Hunter. As I was making my video there was a man mowing the baseball field and the mower was red that just happened to match my shirt.

For my uncomfortable video I had a little bit of trouble thinking of something. While most people tried to make the crowd mentally and emotionally uncomfortable, I decided to go for the physically uncomfortable. I remebered learning that if you were to touch your face the entire time you talked to someone that they would too eventually start touching their face. So I moved the frame in very close to my face and touched my face and scratched my face for 60 seconds. My hypothosis proved true when we watched the videos because 6 people in the crowd touched their face region.

For my live performance I decided to go for more of a deep performance. I found a song from the right kind of genre for my contemporary peice and created a story with my dancing of a girl who starts out alone then meets a guy and falls in love then one day she gets mad and strikes him and he strikes her down and she lays crumpled on the ground. The word I used to insipre this peice was BROKEN.

Bills lecture 9/17

POST MODERNISM

- pluralism of viewoints                                                                                                                
-Shift from a dialog taking place in person ( in NY or to a mediated dialog through art fairs, Paris)
   media, etc...                                                                                                                             

MODERNISM

-The shock of the new rapid progression of styles.
-transgressive- opposition to mainstream society    
-avant garde                                                        
-rejection of  the past                                           
-Colonial view of non-european cultures              

IMPRESSIONISM

-MONET

POST IMPRESSIONISM

"Art consists of inventing, not copying" ~ Fernard Legar

bills lecture 9/3

WHAT IS ART?

• artist thought of it
• image of a person
• aesthetically pleasing
• inspires thought
• someone made it
• nature isnt art

the impulse for art

TO PRESENT OR REPRESENT

representation- one thing stands for another
styles of representation:

• naturalistic
• as in nature
• realistic
• true to life
• stylized
• simplified to emphasize important details
• abstract
• highly sylized (may not be recognizable)

SCALE OF REPRESENTATION

kid with                                                                 woman with

baseball bat     ingress    reflection   bates                 guitar

<----I------------I----------I---------I----------------I----------------------------------------->

hardcore                                      stylization                                                            abstract
natualism                 <-less stylized                   more stylized-->   
realistic

katys lecture 10/1

ART

Subject/ Form/ Content........organize principles
             shape
             line
             dot/ point
             value/ hue
             space
             texture
repitition repitition repitition
Repitition- negative space-negative (focal point)- change
<-harmony--------------------------------Contrast->
  (monotony)                                              (chaos)

• repitition
• rhythm
• pattern
• balance
• symmetry
• gravity
• color
• size
• texture
• asymetry

feminist art
minimalist
post minimalist

kathys lecture 9/10

Perception-the ability to see relevant differences

CREATIVITY

• mental/intelect
• ADD
• observation
• see beyond
• playful
• sensitivity
• emotion
• empathetic
• mental
• physical
• attentive
• alert
• aware
• awake
• process
• productivity
• adaptible
• origionality
• flexibility
• maladjusted
• analize
• organization
• accidents
• fluency
• domain
• language
• verbal
• body
• visual
• written
• math
• science
• sound
• tactical

BLOCKS

• physical
• intelectual
• enviromental
• emotional
• fear of failure
• expressive
• cultural
• no humor
• taboos
• rules
• fear
• playful
• childs play

You must understand the problem and the rules
devise a plan- what language? (math, visual, etc.)


      .   .   .
      .   .   .
      .   .   .   (conect the dots using only 4 straight lines)

What can you do?

• idea
• plan
• put to other use
• adapt
• modify
• magnify
• minify
• substitute
• rearrange
• reverse
• combine
• Dream
• imagine
• purge
• incubate
• display
• organize
• list
• checklist
• diagram

human dot crit

crit

when the class looked over my groups dots the overall reaction was good. everyone liked the idea of using the hair for the dots. my designs were not edited when i posted them so the concrete was visible. i now have edited them and they look like dots now instead of people laying down on a sheet. also the whole class decided it was better that travis was the one with the longest hair rather than it being a girl. It gives it more of that wrong look because when most people think of long hair they think of girls, well guess what people... youre wrong!