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Thanks to everyone who has taken the time out to read the blog. Didn't make this to gain followers but it's nice to know people are reading what I'm putting down.

Picasso's Blue Period

In the spring of 1901, Picasso learnt about the suicide of friend and fellow painter Carlos Casagemas, and fell into deep depression. These blue paintings are a representation of Picasso's melancholy and sombre mood throughout the years 1901-4, his mood dominating his paintings. Picasso's Blue Period was followed in 1904 by his Rose Period, when his mood improved and this reflected in the pink, red tones of his paintings.

La Vie (1903)

Casagemas in his Coffin (1901)

Portrait of Jamie Sabartes (1901)

The Old Guitarist (1903)

The Rose Period (The Actor - 1901)

The Styles of Henri Matisse

Henri Matisse was one of my favourite artists when I was in 6th form and had left the safety net of realistic art. One of the leading figures of modern art despite starting off fairly safe and realistic, Matisse experimented with Fauvism, Divisionism, Collage and Interior Design.

Fauvism:

From the French 'Fauve' - meaning 'wild beast', the movement lasted from 1904 till 1908, Matisse being one of the leading figures. Inspired by Impressionism, Fauvism uses the same style of bright and expressive colours, yet differs because the colours of the painting have no regards to the natural colours, whereas Impressionist art still suggests the original colour. Matisse and other artists who made art within the movement are regarded as 'Fauves' because Louis Vauxcelles, a critic of the time, commented on an exhibition of Fauve work as 'Donatello parmi les fauves!' (Donatello among the wild beasts!), referring to the Renaissance type sculpture in the room of the exhibition. The movement faced harsh criticism, but today it is what Matisse is most known for!

Woman with a Hat (1905)

Portrait of Madame Matisse (1906)

Blue Nude (1907)

Divisionism:

Also a Neo-Impressionist movement, the style of Divisionism involves not painting by mixing colours, but instead implying tones by separating colour and applying paint with dots and stripes. The movement began with Georges Seurat, A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte (1884-6), and the style was used in the late 19th and early 20th century by prominent artists such as Robert Delaunay, Vincent van Gogh and Matisse.

A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte (1884-6) - Georges Seurat

Les toits de Collioure (1905) - Matisse

Self Portrait with a Felt Hat (1888) - Van Gogh

Collage:

In the 1940s Matisse was diagnosed with cancer and had to start using a wheelchair. Despite being incredibly ill, Matisse found a new lease of life through paper cut outs. His paper cut outs, often on an enormous scale, were made using the scissors freehand to make shapes. After cutting the shapes, Matisse would pin the paper to the walls of his studio and arrange the forms into an arrangement Matisse found most appropriate. In 1947, Matisse published a book Jazz full of his paper cut outs.

Blue Nude (1952)

The Fall of Icarus (1943)

The Snail (1953)

La Gerbe (1953)

Interior Design:

In 1947, Matisse was asked by Sister Jacques-Marie to design the interior of the Chapelle du Rosaire de Vence, a church in the French riviera. The end project is very obviously Matisse, the figures and the stain glass very similar to his paper cut outs. Possibly one of the biggest jobs of Matisse's life, the design took 4 years to complete, and Matisse died a few years after its completion.

Matisse and Sister Jacques-Marie

Can paintings be too famous to see?

Will Gompertz investigates in this blog piece whether a painting can be too famous or not to see. Do the backgrounds of famous artworks, such as the famous Mona Lisa, cloud our true opinions of the artwork itself...very Walter Benjamin-esque.

Will's article

May be worth reading Walter Benjamin too, it's long but it's interesting. To summarise his work, Benjamin asserts that reproduction of artwork destroys the authenticity or 'aura' of the original. By bringing the artwork closer to us with film and pictures, our opinion of the artwork is decided by the reproduction instead of the original, destroying the true reason it was created.

Walter Benjamin - In the Age of Mechanical Reproduction (1935)

Alyssa Monks

Alyssa Monks is a realist painter from New Jersey. She has studied art in Florence, Italy and New York City, USA, as well as also teaching in New York. Monks uses natural filters such as glass, water and steam to distort the shapes of the body in her paintings. Her most recent artworks involve painting the figure behind a shower screen, the steam distorting the body. Her works are extremely detailed and exact, heres a statement from Monks:

"When I began painting the human body, I was obsessed with it and needed to create as much realism as possible. I chased realism until it began to unravel and deconstruct itself,” Alyssa states, “I am exploring the possibility and potential where representational painting and abstraction meet - if both can coexist in the same moment."

Check Alyssa's website for more!

C'était un rendez-vous

C'était un rendez-vous


C'était un rendez-vous (It was a date) is a short film of under 10 minutes, recorded in Paris in 1976 by Claude Lelouch. The viewer is placed at the front of a car driving at an extraordinary speed through Paris at 5.30 in the morning, passing by famous tourist attractions such as the Arc de Triomphe, Opéra Garnier, and Place de la Concorde. The driver eventually ends up in Montmartre in front of the Sacré Cœur cathedral and meets a blonde woman who runs up the stairs to greet him, hence the name C'était un rendez-vous.

Rumour has it that Lelouch was arrested after the release of the film because the drive was of course illegal. In the film we see the driver speeding the wrong way down one way streets, driving on the pavement to avoid oncoming vehicles and pedestrians jumping out the way. The car is said to be a Mercedes, but the soundtrack of a racing car is from another Italian vehicle, a Ferrari. No one knows for sure who the driver is, some rumours suggest it is an F1 racer, others suggest there were more than 1 person in the car, but the most common suggestion is that Lelouch himself was driving as it is believed the blonde woman by Sacré Cœur is Lelouch's girlfriend.

I enjoyed the film a lot, especially because I went to Paris in March for the first time and fell in love with the city, it was great to see a new familiar city being shown in a film such as  C'était un rendez-vous and recognising the sites zooming past the car. 

Beth Galton

Beth Galton has made a series of, in her words, 'Conceptual' artworks in which she has examined the way we look at food amongst other things. 

Cut Food: Here Beth has taken apart the food we rarely see inside of, such as the favourite pot noodle or ice cream cone

Beth kindly sent me a statement about Cut Food: 


This series was inspired by an assignment in which we were asked to cut a burrito in half for a client.  Normally for a job, we photograph the surface of food occasionally taking a bite or a piece out but rarely the cross section of a finished dish.  Charlotte Omnès, the food stylist and I thought it would be interesting to explore the interiors of various foods particularly items commonplace to our everyday life.  By cutting these items in half we move past the simple appetite appeal we normally try to achieve and explore the interior worlds of these products. I chose to light them with a harder light, and to place them against black.  Daniel Hurlburt composited elements in retouching to achieve the final image. Both Charlotte and I felt that this approach helped highlight our exploration of the world within.

Landscapes: In this series of photographs, Beth zooms into food and captures the different textures we experience with sight instead of touch and taste, creating images which look like abstract landscapes.

Idioms: The last set of images I'm showing is perhaps the most interesting, called idioms. An idiom is a set of words in which the meaning isn't deductible if they are not put together, for example 'raining cats and dogs'. Beth has used this definition to place together  in photographs, things which we put together instantly in our minds, (much like my post on David Schwen a month ago).

Beth has posted loads more of her projects on her website so take a look!

Kiss

Some beautiful watercolours such as the one above can be found on fhgalland.tumblr.com

What is meaning?

How do we decode the things we see? For one of my university essays, I have been reading up on Erwin Panofsky's theory of iconography, the semiotics of images, and how we decode the images we see almost instantaneously, without even thinking about what we are doing. 

In Panofsky's theory, he relates iconography to gesture, in particular the tip of a hat when walking past someone you know as a greeting. The person to whom the hat is tipped recognises this as a greeting, a polite gesture, and in order for them to understand the meaning they would've had to exist in the same cultural and social context. Yet we don't even think about how we interpret the things we see. Another example, as in the book 'Practices of Looking' by Marita Sturken and Lisa Cartwright, is road signs. If we think about road signs, we interpret them quickly and easily, and pretty fast we understand them and don't think twice when we see them. The same relates to images, for example, if I were to show you the image below, you would instantly connect that to the Olympics. Both the symbol of the rings and the word 'Olympics' represent the event, that's semiotics for you.

Although Panofsky's theory is meant for artworks from the Renaissance, lets interpret the Olympic rings using it. 

Breaking down interpretation or meaning:

1) Primary or Natural

- I recognise the shapes and colours

2) Secondary or Conventional

- I recognise the symbol as representation of the Olympics, I recognise the cultural context

- I recognise that the rings mean the 5 competitive continents and the colours (including white) represent the colours of the flags of all competing countries

3) Intrinsic meaning

- The symbol tells us the about the cultural context it was created in

- An age of sport and competition 

- The symbol was created only 100 years ago, so the symbol was created in a fairly contemporary age

Tom Fruin - Watertower on Brooklyn skyline

Artist Tom Fruin is going to build another stain glass water tower in New York after his first one last summer, this one is due to start installation on the 10th May.

Here are some pictures of Watertower I, a beautiful addition to the Brooklyn skyline. Built out of over 1000 pieces of plexiglass and steel, it sits on top of a water station.

I will update you in about a week of the new installation!
www.tomfruin.com

College for Creative Studies

The clever marketing team at the College for Creative Studies have put together this set of humourous advertisements