Art Gallery Visit #1: Responding to Artwork

 One artwork that  I saw at Albright Knox Art Gallery that made a great impact on me was the video installation, Untitled, 1993 by Jennifer Steinkamp. I love to see new art media like video done in an engaging and interesting way. I really  was intrigued by the way the colorful projected image moved on the floor, like waves in water. I have seen some of Steinkamp's work before and I love it because it engages the viewer to almost be a part of the artwork. I love the exciting colors and movement of her work. Another art work that made an impression on me was Lee Bontecou's untitled wall sculpture, made in 1960. Although I have seen it many times, I have not really gotten too close to observe it's details. I love this piece because, headlong you think it is just a painting in a frame, but it surprises you with it's three-dimensionality. It also engages the viewer by popping out at them. I liked the mixture of differing textures of steel, copper wire and canvas. It reminds me of a black hole to nowhere.



One artwork that I felt a personal connection with was Femme retroussant sa chemise, by Henri de Toulousse-Lautrec. I have always loved Lautrec's unique style and his romantic representation of Bohemian Paris' seedy underworld. This time period in art history is so intriguing and influential to me. When I was in high school, my art teacher compared my painting style to Lautrec's  and I have used him for inspiration ever since.

Another piece that I felt a personal connection with was September, by Clyfford Still. I think the scale of his work really helps people to become engrossed and entranced with his work. I just stood in front of this piece meditating on the textures and the lovely shade of yellow.

 
One work that I would like to know more about what the digital photo, Inhabit, by Janine Antonit. I thought this was a very intriguingly photo, perhaps a comment on mother's roles and being tied down to the house, like the woman here is physically tethered. I would like to know about who the woman in the photo is and about the artists' intentions. Another artwork I would like to know more about is Kara Walker's Emancipation Approximation series. I have seen her work before and find it intriguing, if not disturbing. I would like to know a little bit more as to the message behind this work. I know it is about slavery, but there are a lot of metaphors in her work that I find hard to interpret.

Logo Project

1. I had some fun making my logo, I decided finally on this particular logo, because I wanted to represent my tranquil and meditative side with the representation of a lotus flower. I like to do yoga and meditate. The cool colors I used in hopes of creating that calming and tranquil effect.

2. I thought making my own logo was an interesting process, while at times frustrating. It was a creative exploration, which always takes thoughtful decision making.  I thought about what messages about myself  I wanted to convey, graphic qualities and color choices. Initially I had a ton of ideas so I had to choose which one I thought best represented me.

 

3.  I discovered that it is important to design something that you feel is the best representation of yourself, that you have a connection to. It can be difficult to think like a graphic designer and simplify an image to its bare essentials.I learned I do not know enough about computers because I could not get my picture to stay rotated when I uploaded to Blogger! Is this a flaw in Blogger?

  

4. One interesting thing I learned from the video about graphic design was just how many people are involved in the process of creating a new  idea. It takes a whole team of people with different responsibilities.

The powerpoint was very useful in teaching the basics of what a logo is, its qualities are simple and memorable.

Exploring Value and Subtractive Color Theory

The idea of subtractive color theory is something I am very familiar with, and I'm sure something that people have learned over and over again since elementary school. I thought this was a simple task, but one can always learn new things through repetition. Even though I have done value scales in the past, they can always be a challenge to get just the right gradation from one level to the next. It took some addition and subtraction of charcoal to get just the right values. I enjoyed working with paint because of its fluid nature and because I love mixing and experimenting with colors. One thing that I learned when doing this is that you must have cyan to make just the right color wheel, because I only had phthalo blue and this made my purple come out too dark. I I learned that certain kinds of paper, such as vellum can be more receptive to graphite and you want to used a blunt tip of the pencil instead of a sharpened tip to make flowing and even passages. I thought both of these videos were very informative to the process.

Photo Project

I just posted my Principals and Elements Photo project on Photobucket, here's the link:
http://s1168.photobucket.com/albums/r484/NatalieDKorchowsky/

I had a great time doing this project because I really liked the creative element and I love taking photos anyway. I was able to enjoy a really nice walk and think about the principals and elements of art subjectively. I took most of these photos on a walk around Delaware Park, but the ones that I did not get there, I took at a concert I went to this week. I got to really apply the principles and elements to my own art, which is a very hands on way of learning. I hope I can continue to use them thoughtfully through out other works I do.

Color and Emotion

1. Color can evoke a complex reaction of emotions to the viewer. Colors often have cultural and symbolical associations. Sometimes colors can have contradictory cultural meanings. Certain colors can evoke certain moods, for example "cool"colors often have a calming and subdued mood associated with them, while warm colors are linked with moods of excitement or passion. Still, dark colors are associated with negative emotions and ideas.

2. The theoretical aspect of color that intrigues me the most is optical color mixing. I think it is fascinating that just by putting colors next to each other, the brain can mix the colors that are not separate on the canvas, as Chuck Close and George Seurat have done in their painting. It takes a very skilled painter and color theorist to make these kinds of paintings.

3. In the "Color video", something that made a large impact on me was how bold, contrasting colors can evoke strong emotions and that Vincent van Gogh was one of the first artists to utilize this practice. He was one of the first artist to abstract color and by putting jarring, contrasting colors next to each other to give the feeling of anxiety and madness that he felt in seedy cafes.

5. In the "Feeling video", the idea that had the largest impact on me in regards to color and it's effects on emotion was the way in which Fransisco de Goya used color, or didn't use color to show to make his critique on society. He used dark and murky colors to show the despair and depravity of society and human nature. He really captured a heightened sense of emotion through his dark color choices.

Video Review: Aesthetics and Neurobiology

      In the video, Aesthetics: Philosophy of the Arts, the key concepts that I learned about included the definition of aesthetics, who the major philosophers who contributed to the discussions of aesthetics and what thier individual theories are. I also learned about the contemporary and modern ideas on aesthetics including what is believed to constitute as art today when we have visual images bombarding us from all sorts of media everyday.
       In the "CARTA" video, I learned many new concepts on the "science of art" as stated by scientists, Jean Pierre Changuex and Vilayanur Ramachandra. Changeux explained the key concepts on the human brain and the synthesis of multiple nested reprocesses. His theories dealt also with the processing of visual images, bottom-up processing in the brain and how these relate to feeling and emotions when one sees a piece of art. Ramachandra's key points were on the laws of art that he stated were biological inherited and span all cultures and humanity. His eight laws of art include grouping, peak-shift principal, contrast, "attention", perceptual problem solving, symmetry and art as a metaphor.
       From the first video on aesthetics, I found the most important philosopher to be Immanuel Kant, who was from Prussia and lived during the late 18th century, otherwise known in history as the Enlightenment period. Kant's ideas rejected the rules of beauty that other philosophers had laid out by stating that judgement of beauty is about the individual feeling and completely subjective. In this way there can be no exact science of beauty. He was also the first to philosophize on the beauty of the sublime and the ultimate genious of nature.
      I thought it was interesting how the scientists from the CARTA video explained the connection between art and our neurobiological functions. I think they made a lot of good and well researched points, however,  I do not think that there can really be a true science to art. Like Kant, I think art is too emotional and subjective to set such laws to. I am sure that a lot of the points they made an be seen as scientific fact, but I dont think you can generalize the way everyone views art in such ways. One point however that I agreed with and found very interesting was Ramachandra's theory on metaphor.
      These videos related to the text of "Living with Art" from chapter's 1-3 in that they both discussed the key ideas of aesthetics. The videos went into detail about certain domains of aesthetics, the philosophical and the scientific. I think both videos added a lot of depth to the discussion of art by giving us both a historical and scientific knowledge on the subject.