The sensitive topic of childhood and adulthood

For our theory class we have to curate an exhibition and we can choose the theme. For some people it was difficult to think of a theme, but I knew straight away that I wanted to do something with children. Artist, who's subject is children have been some of my favourites and using children myself as a topic in my art has always been something I have wanted to do.

So I started off with an artist I had seen in the guardian magazine ages ago and I had kept the images but had forgotten her name. I managed to find her. She is called Frieke Janssens and the series was called smoking kids.

This girl looks a lot like my little cousin

The kids were given fake cigarettes and then the smoke was edited in later. The idea of a child smoking is so scary, firstly because it is an adult thing and secondly because smoking is bad for you and we have to protect children.

I then typed artist who use children as a subject and I found Jonathan Hobin, who is a canadian artist and shocked a lot of people with his photography series 'In the Playroom'. The first thing I found was an article on whether it was responsible of the parents to let their children be part of it.

The boys knew exactly that they were recreating 9/11

Having the children reenact famous disaster is radicle but only because the older generation believe that we should not exposed children to this and that children are to naive to know what they are doing. But Hobin proved that a lot of the children did know what they were doing. Anyway children play games where they kill each other all the time.

There was a link to Anna Skladmann's (again) photography series called Little Adults. 

The photographs are of the children of the new super rich. These are children who are like little adults because their parents give them everything, because when the parents were young they had nothing. They children are extremely powerful and could probably order your death, which is a scary idea. 

I wanted to add old really old portraits of children because they all look like little adults, because the idea of childhood did not exist. 

At the weekend I also thought of Diane Arbus, who famously photographed 'Child with Toy Hand Grenade.' I had seen this picture in Berlin a couple of years ago and it seems to fit my subject well.

3D, it's a family thing.

3D works for me because I like making things big. Sculptures attract a lot of attention. When they are outside they can be as big as you like and they are often permanent, like the statue of liberty or the angel of the north. You can walk round sculptures and touch them, if you are allowed to or you are rebel in an art gallery. For people who are not completely obsessed with art, sculpture and statues are easy for them to access and understand. The Yorkshire sculpture park is a good example of this. People go there with their family to see art, but their kids can just climb all over the sculptures and then they take nice pictures of their children for the family album. If they do not like the sculpture they move on. If they were in an art gallery with paintings or photography, they would be bored out of their mind. 3D is just more relatable to the mainstream because they live in a 3D world. If they cannot see the deep and meaningful point of the sculpture they can see it as a chair or a bed. Kids are especially good at this, which is why 3D is a family thing. 

Sewing, Santiago Calatrava and me

Santiago Calatrava is one hell of a crazy guy. His buildings are amazing. They are spectacular works of art, that take up vast amounts of space and dominate any skyline. They are big and bold, which is what I love about his work but what I like the most is that he gets his ideas from organic things like a bird or a torso and he turns it into architectural gem, using bold straight lines and unnatural repetition.

           

 

    

So I toke the same approach to my 3D piece, only I toke inspiration from my cat

Cat Yawning

Cat Stretching

A cat has something very pointy about it, so I found it an easy subject for 'Calatrava' inspired construction. I simplified imaged and played around with shapes and line. The final product of my project was this.

It was a pain in the ass to sew and because the cardboard was not strong enough so I could not get the string as tight as possible. Although you cannot see it in this picture if you at it from the side the lines of string makes this curve, which was meant to represent the arc of the cat's back. I am quite please with it and I feel that it is in the style of Calatrava.

3 Photographers of note

I love photography. I especially love photography of people, because it is always so unique. People move and change all the time and a photograph captures that moment perfectly.

Children are always a great subject because they are full of life and energy. They do not yet hide their emotions. They are an open book. That is why out of the 50 photographers that we could choose from I chose this photograph by Vivian Maier. She took pictures of various people from all walks of life. This particular photograph appealed to me because the way these two girls interact with one another. They are clearly the best of friends and are probably having a great time. The way Maier has composed this photograph is interesting. It is not a full body shot and neither is it a portrait, because we more that just their heads. The girls faces are central so it is the first thing we looked at, but by having more of the girls than just their heads, we can see their body language, this adds a lot to the photograph. Although facial expressions show our emotions, our body language shows more about how we interact with the people around us.

Photographs of people really up close I sometimes could like at for hours. Because they are so close up you can often see all the detail in the subject's face: their emotions, wrinkles around their eyes, the curve of their mouth and in the case of this photograph the freckles on their face. This photograph was taken by Sally Mann, who did a whole series of faces, but I chose this one because of the expression that the subject has. It is an expression of complete peace. The subject is calm, but it is still quite intense. The some of other pictures in the series are erotic, and I find that this one has it too, but at the same time it is innocent because of the freckles. The nose and the mouth are in focus but the rest is not. The nose covered in freckles is innocent but the half open mouth is very erotic, and having only these two features in focus dictates the mood of the photograph.

Another reason I love photography is because the subjects far weirder than when it is a painting. The internet is full of funny pictures but only some which are put in the right context or are taken by the right people can be called art. This photograph by Tony Ray Jones I personally found very amusing. But I guess that it captures a bit of history too. This couple is clearly enjoying a luxurious picnic with good wine and a book and the smell of cow poo/the great outdoors. This photograph tells us a story more than the other photos did. We clearly see here a couple, who probably been together for some time and decided to go for a picnic today, but it could not just be a normal picnic, they are a respectable couple and they will not sit on the ground in order to enjoy their lunch and the good weather, they brought a table and chairs to sit on. It looks a bit like a dining room has been set up in the middle of a field, I find that pretty hilarious. 

Why life drawing made Titanic even worse.

We have been having life drawing lessons every week for over a month. Which is why yesterday we had to draw one pose for over two hours. We were told by the teacher that even though we all love drawing with big, curvy line we were not aloud to do that anymore. until we got better at drawing. 

We had to use straight line to mark out the figure and then use hatching to create darker shapes. This method is not very me, I love splashing paint about and making a huge expressive mess when drawing, but I did what I was told and drew with straight line. At first I was still a bit too expressive, making the lines too thick and heavy, but I have improved. 

The other day I was flicking channels and I came across Titanic. Now I am not a big Titanic fan. I cry at the end because Leonardo DiCaprio dies and at the time he was quite a hottie, but it pisses me off when they spend 2 hours going in and out of the water like it is not that cold. So I got to the bit where Leo is drawing Kate 'like one of his french girls', in the first place Leo is not really drawing her and who ever is drawing her does not map her out like we are supposed to do in life drawing class. He or she, just starts at Kate's head and draws it perfectly all the way down, with shading and everything. That is just completely crazy! No one would ever do that. No one who has ever drawn a person would do that. 

So that is how life drawing has made Titanic even worse, because in the famous 'draw me like one of your french girls' scene they do not actually draw like a normal person. The whole thing is just so fake.

Photography - R 'n' B

We were given a letter and we had to photograph objects or actions that started with that letter. I got the letter R and later I got the letter B.

Running

Red Berries

Rowan Berries (I think, there was quite a debate on what they were)

Red Rabbit ears

Bars 

Bricks

Walking Artists

We walk everyday. Learning to walk is one of the first things we do in our life. Some artists use this in their art. For example:

Touch

Janine Antoni 
She practice tightrope walking until she could walk across the horizon. She has touch the horizon. She walked across water just like Jesus. It us a beautiful photograph and the set up is great. It is a very simple idea walking along things you cannot normally walk on. Something as normal as walking she has turned into something spectacular. 

Tehching Hsieh
He is a performing artist and he does year long projects. This particular one was not entering a building for a year, being outside for a whole year. All he could do was walk around New York City. When you cannot go inside all you can really do is walk, because it keeps you warm. I believe that on top of the fact that walking keeps you warm, it also keeps you sane. Hsieh made walking into a life saving thing.

The Lovers

Marina Abramović & Ulay

I am already a huge fan of Marina Abramović. Her work is impressive and emotional and this performance which she did with her long standing partner Ulay is no exception. They both walk from opposite ends of the Great Wall and met in the middle. It took 90 days and they both had to walk 1200 miles. The original plan was for them to get married when they met in the middle, but their relationship had not been going well, so it changed to them meeting and then never seeing each other again (until 2011). The idea of these two people, who emotional connection was great, walking all that distance towards each other and then when they finally meet they are never to see each other again - it is heart breaking. It nearly drivers me to tears. It is so beautiful. The dedication of walking all that way only to meet someone, who means so much to you, for the last time is incredible. The meaning of walking is changed in that situation. Every step you take brings you closer to the person you love but at the same time it brings you closer to seeing them for the last time. 

All these artists have change the meaning of walking in their art. Antoni made the impossible possible and Hsieh had to walk in order to survive and Abramović and Ulay walk to their doom. They all made something so normal into something incredibly powerful.  

3 Artist, 3 Artworks and 3 Reflections

Arch of Hysteria, 1993

This is a piece is by Louise Bourgeois. I find it enchanting, beautiful, gross, torturing, sad, painful and very interesting. The choice of position for the sculpture clear reflects the name. The body is making an arch and it is just a radical position, it over the top and hysterical. The material is appealing because of it shininess so you are drawn to it, only then you see how boney it is and if it was a real human you would be repulsed by the thinness of it. I think it is a beautiful piece it captures the moment of hysteria and you feel the movement of the body. It has something very joyful about it but at the same time because it is so skinny you do not want to look at it.

Hoffmann von Fallersleben auf Helgoland

This is by Anselm Kiefer. I actually saw this in a gallery in Berlin. At first I thought it was just some paint splashed about, until I saw the perspective that Kiefer had painted into the canvas. It has a great texture, which makes it aggressive. But high lights in the middle of the painting give it a sense of hope. It reminds me of the trenches, with the destruction all around and the sun rising for a new day. It is a huge piece that engulfs you with its aggressive texture.

Woman descending the staircase

This photograph is by Gerhard Richter. The first thing I think of is how ghostly it is. The colour pallet is limited and the the woman is the centre piece. It is a simple portrait but Richter has made it into a piece of art by making ghostly. The woman is glamorous and dreamy and it is reflected in the photograph with the smudgy edges and the dark colours.

Oliver Jeffers and that Super cute Penguin

Oliver Jeffers' illustartions make me want to cry, they are that beautiful. I looked up his book 'Lost and Found' on YouTube. It was someone reading his story with the drawings as the background. I thought it was so beautiful I nearly cried. Although you see the characters only for a short while you still get found of them and you want them to be happy. Maybe we route for these characters because the main character is a child and the other is a baby penguin and we are programmed to protect children and we want them to be happy. 

I watch the video with the sound but since we are learning about visual communication, I want to see someone watch the story with out hearing someone reading out the story and see their reaction, because I believe that they would have the same reaction I had.









The drawing of the sad looking penguin has to be one of the most heart breaking, while the picture of the little boy and the penguin hugging is heart warming. Jeffers make his drawing small leaving so much space around them, that the small drawing is the focus of the picture. There is nothing that can distract us from the characters because if how simple they has been drawn and because most of the time the background is blank.We are completely focused on the characters, they have our complete attention. Which why Jeffers can use subtle but recognisable actions which effects the audience straight away. The drawing of the sad Penguin shows this well, you do not even need to read the text to know that this penguin sad. His head is only bowed a tiny bit but it makes all the difference. 

I can conclude that something as simple as the illustrations in children's book can be incredibly powerful art. Jeffers' work is a classic example as he uses key 2D themes, like compilation and colour and gives life to enchanting characters.

Visual Communication and Textiles

I have just finish the first part of my exploratory stage of my course, which was visual communication and textiles or 2D design, what ever you want to call it. We learnt about relationships in art. I had no idea what relationships in art meant at the time because with a pretty intense two weeks of drawing with your wrong hand and painting without looking at you paper, you surprising start to understand the basics.

At first I was pretty pessimistic since I my opinion the first couple of drawings we did weren't my greatest work. This is what I believed at first, however at the end of the two weeks I can appreciate the work I did at the beginning a lot more. Before these weeks I always thought I was quite free with my drawing and thinking, but this week has proved that there is so much more room for growth. Being free with drawing is not only holding your pencil in a certain way but it also is see and think more freely. 




Although scribbling with your eyes not looking at your paper was fun, what I enjoyed the most was doing the research into illustrators and graphic designers and looking at the disciplines of 2D design. The artist I looked at varied from Noma Bar, who uses block colour to Oliver Jeffers, who creates beautiful children's character full of emotion with so little. Both I have done posts on.

Above you can see a days work on one still life (top left), where we had to use a view finder to compose various thumbnails (top middle). We then pick our three favourites and draw them over a double page (top right). We then did a final piece on A2 (bottom). The exercise was to practice composition, but we also touch on colour. Which made prefect sense because composition works hand in hand with colour. Before my final piece looked like the picture it did not have any black in.  Most people's work did not have any black until we hung them all on the wall and saw that the ones with the black just made the piece look less flat. So we learnt that colour is key for a composition to work. You need a good colour pallet. Which brings me to the rest of the week where we focused more on colour.

Our homework was to create colour pallets from photographs.

This one came from a photo I took in the Hamburger Bahnhof in Berlin. It is of a Warhol. I thought the colour pallet was great, because it use the secondary colours. It just goes to show that Warhil knew his colour pallets. 

When I took this photograph the weather was great so the blue works well against the warmer reds and yellows of the flowers. I never did a lot of work with oil pastels but since this course is all about experimenting I thought I would have a go at it. Since the colours in the photograph are so bright the oil pastels actually worked.

The first thing I thought when I saw this photograph was of a newspaper, because all the colours are a bit greyish.

Now I look at colours differently. Not only in drawings or painting but also in photography.

This is the last piece I did.

I am not completely sure if it shows all the aspects of 2D design coming together but it definitely shows something. They made us work into it after we were finished scribbling in various media. They gave use control back after forcing us to be free. I painted over most of the piece but you the get the basic idea of what it was at first.

I think that this week I learnt how to be more free in my thinking, not just my drawing. I got a wider idea of art and 2D design. I also learnt there is a lot more art in graphic design then I thought in the beginning. 

A Bunch of Ties

We have moved on to fine art, which means we have way more freedom! This makes it a lot more fun. At the moment we are drawing pieces of scrunched up paper, using shoe polish and masking tape. We us masking tape for pretty much anything. That is something else I have learnt that all you need for an art foundation course is a 4B pencil, a sketch book and masking tape. Anyway back to today, we now have more freedom in our ideas and we can control what we make, so it is the complete opposite to what we were doing last week. Last week we did technique and this week we are working on our freedom in ideas. Here is the result, a bunch of ties.

Lee Crutchley and our Inner Child

I was randomly given a book by on of my friends, because it reminded her of me. It is called 'Quoteskine' by Lee Crutchley and was a project 'with the simple aim of drawing for the love of drawing, using films, music, books and more as inspiration.' Lee Crutchley is a Graphic Designer and Illlusatrator, who was told by his art teacher that he would get an F. The idea behind Quoteskin is rediscovering your inner child. We become less creative as we grow up and we do not want to draw to draw anymore, when as a child we draw all the time and we are by default creative. So Quoteskin is the adult world meeting the childish nature of doodling. The book contains quotes from famous people, movies and songs.

Why so serious?

This is one of Crutchley's most famous quote doodle thingy. The concept is simple and it is a classic use of text and image. What is so clever about this particular image is that, because the quote is so famous and so is the make up of Heath Ledger's Joker, that even before you can read the text you already know what it is going to say.

The Office vs Peter Pan

This is personally one of my favourites, not because I am a huge fan of Peter Pan or the Office, I do enjoy them both but I do know the basic story of both. The idea of having Peter Pan say that he needs to grow up is funny on it is own, but since it is a direct quote from the Office it works just that bit better. Having Peter Pan, who is always a child combined with the Office, where the basic plot line is grown ups trying to get through the day by playing games or pranking each other, shows the while idea behind Quoteskin well. We do not want Peter Pan to say that he needs to grow up, because that is sad. We envy Peter Pan because he does not feel that he needs a job or a house or a family or money, he just wants to have fun. In this doodle he has decided that he is going to join us in the Office misery and we do not want him to leave those cute little lost boys, that would be sad.

Crutchley's work is charming and funny. Everyone can enjoy his work, simply because everyone can either relate to them, like the 10 things I hate about the internet poem.

Or maybe because the subject is super famous.

Fight Club

'I am after the maximum communication with minimum elements' - Noma Bar

That quote describes his work in the best way possible. Noma Bar is a graphic designer, who in my opinion is a genius. He was born in Israel in 1973 and that he graduated from Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design. 


The reason that his piece work is because they are simple but at the same time you need to have a good look at them in order to get the image. 

This image is called Red Riding Hood. You have that larger image which is the wolf, which is the first thing you see and then you look closer to see that the wolf's nose is Little Red Riding Hood. It communicates the fairy tale perfectly, with the wolf following his nose and Red Riding Hood at the same time. Not only is the way Bar has drawn it show the fairy tale but also his choice of colour. The earthy neutral background, as if it is the woods, the dark dominate colour of the wolf, the red, which is both the signature cape and the mouth of the blood thirsty wolf and the white, which highlights the innocent face of Red Riding Hood and the sharp teeth of the wolf. It all contributes to the final product. Even the placement of the wolf is important, the fact that we only see his head, as if he is hiding behind a tree, works so well. It is so clever.

Bar does loads of pieces based on famous cultural subjects, like:

Slumdog Millionaire 

Shakespeare: To be or not to be?

His other work is often more political, for example:

Iraq Oil

Nuclear Iran

I especially like the Iraq Oil. The scale of the large powerful hand squeezing/forcing the oil out of tiny Iraq, shows us how all powerful America forced Iraq into the state it is now because of oil. The hand clearing wearing a suit if you look closely. Such small detail finishes the idea of corporate, capitalist America squeezing 'black gold' from poor helpless Iraq, simply because we associate suits with the corporate world.

There were two other pieces that I in particular.

Banged Up

In both of these images Bar only uses two colours and the shapes are simple. I could not find the name of the one on the left, but it is one of my favourite ones. It is creepy, wrong and very affective. The legs are just standing, their not posing in any way and this small hand is creeping up and touching something which is not meant to be touch. As soon as I saw this one it became one of my favourites, it is so simple and yet so powerful. It is pure genius. The second one, 'Banged Up' I also find powerful because of the very childlike nature of the drawing. It has something of a children's cartoon, with the over sized head and tiny face. That tiny little tear that you do not see at first, because the first thing that you see is the keyhole, just breaks your heart. The positioning of the graphic bang in the middle of the image works, because not only does that show the position of the keyhole on a door well, but it also shows how small and helpless the little person is with all that space closing in on him. The person even has a little nose.

To conclude Noma Bar is recently one of the greatest artist/graphic designers I have seen. His work is inspirational and very clever. He shows how much someone can do with so little.