Final

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Computers Final

36 Chambers Vs. Art School

I guess Shaolin and art school are very alike.  First you need to prove that you have the skills and are willing to push yourself to be the best you can be at art.  From then on you are in really difficult, sometimes seemingly impossible classes that teach you the essentials of being an artist.  These lessons also wean out people that don’t want it badly enough. 

Perseverance is when someone is so determined to achieve their goal that they won’t let anything stand in their way.  This applies to both the real world and art school because no matter what your goal is in life, you will encounter a lot of challenges.  You really just have to say screw everything else and put yourself entirely into your work if you want to get where you’re going.

I guess that the monks are artists.  They train every day to perfect their craft and better them.  I feel that anyone that creates something weather it is an actual piece of art or mastery of an aspect of kung fu, people always puts a part of themselves into their work.

I think it is a lot like Shaolin temple.  It trains people and gives them the skills to be an artist through a series of levels.  We all start off in foundations, which are like the first chamber, and then work our way up through the ranks.  This is the only real way to go about it.   If you sign up for a master course in painting before you take foundations and everything leading up to it, odds are you’re going to be lost and have no idea what’s going on, just like the main character the first time he went to the 35^th chamber.

The equivalent to those training tools is our foundation year.  We don’t really understand why we have to do everything but it teaches us the vital basics to becoming an artist. We have to trust that what we learn from this year will come into play later when we focus more on implementing them.

I don’t really know what “uniformity of the mind” would be for the artist.  I guess if I had to define it I’d say it is when you as an artist fully understand what you want to do, how you want to do it and why you want to do it.

I don’t really see a difference between the 35 chambers and boot camp.  Both take you through stages to teach you combat.  They break you down, teach you the basic elements, and then build upon that base.  The only difference I can really see might be that a large portion who are sent to boot camp are forced to be there while the 35 chambers were mainly for people that wanted to learn and perfect kung fu. 

I think that, as far as art goes, in school is a totally different environment to outside school.  Inside school, people are very open minded and familiar with different types of art.  They are more accepting and tend to have a better understanding of art.  Outside of art school this is not the case.  A large portion of people take art for face value and don’t really know the thought process behind making a piece of art.  Because of that it is up to the artist to try and reach out to all types of people that might be viewing his or her work if they want to get their message across.

I think challenging the master means challenging your vision of your own piece.  You can never really compare yourself to another artist because you come form a totally different and unique point of view. It’s like comparing apples to oranges.  However, you do have a vision of what you would like your final piece to look like in your head.  When you can reach that ideal image and then surpass it, I feel that you have then beaten the master. 

The creation of the nun chucks is equivalent to experimenting with new mediums.  By mixing concepts and ideas, you can create something totally new and tailor it to your own preferences.

The 36^th chamber is when you take what you learned in art school and bring it out to the public.  Hopefully your art will spark new ideas in people and inspire them to express themselves artistically.

My 36^th chamber is showing my artwork to the general public.

I think it will be a great experience and an opportunity to explore myself.  I won’t be crunching assignments into a given amount of time so I will be able to really figure out who I am as an artist and what art is really about for me. 

"To be Determined" Response

I do agree with him when he talks about being considered as a part of different movements.  Although being classified as a part of a movement does limit the artwork in some ways by putting it in a box, it also provides a point of reference from which it can be viewed.  Armleder even says himself that he doesn’t know what he thinks about his work, so in a way, the guidelines provided by putting his art in categories helps create a more structured and finite idea when it comes to his art.

I guess I do agree with what he says about a generic or neutral art work.  From what I understand, he’s saying that anything you would base art off of is something that exists either as a real object or an idea or concept.  He says that he does not want to recognize his own art because that would be something completely original and an own entity all by itself.  However, I don’t see how that could possibly be done.  It seems by that logically that anything made by a human has to be a preconceived idea or thought.  The only thing that I can think of that actually creates without thinking is nature.

I think recycling forms is a totally reasonable and legitimate idea.  Anything that you draw create is going to be influenced by something in the real world.  You can draw an object from your own context but you were not the one to create that form.  People can only put their own spin on already existing thinks, so why not let that existing thing be a work of art? He also talks about how the use of symbols and easily recognized forms are good because you can use the preconceived ideas about that symbol to your advantage.

I don’t think I really agree with the idea of “pseudointelligen” ideas.  From what I read it seems like he made these installations so that they were dumb and feigning intelligence in hopes that they would create a response that’s more original than an artwork that is actually trying to be intelligent and convey some type of idea.  I feel that that concept is so farfetched and ridiculous that most people would not understand his art at all, unless they had extensive knowledge about what he was thinking at the time.

I feel that I work in a similar way when it comes to “vagueness of precision”.  I gathered that he was talking about how we as humans subconsciously recognize similar shapes and forms when looking at compositions, even if they might not quite realize it.  I always try to have repeating shapes in my drawings that might vary in scale or color to keep the viewer interested.  He did the same thing by keeping the same compositions but varying the type of objects throughout the three rooms in his show.

As an artist, I actually prefer explaining things to the audience rather than having them just be confuse by the subject matter.  I prefer art that has somewhat of a storyline to it and really transports the viewer, instead of having a piece that very few people can even begin to understand.  That way, people can observe what you have to say and combine that with their own prospective and create something unique to them.  I feel that if the viewer is confused they will just have much less of an attachment to a piece and just leave it.

I find the way in which he deals with art interesting but still not quite my taste.  I understand that he prolonged Mosset’s show as kind of a social experiment.  He seemed to be playing with the notion of the artist being this unknown figure.  This indeed succeeds in reinventing his own style however it still seems to me a tad unoriginal.  He just in essence made a large scale readymade, but instead of it being a urinal, it was an art show.

Drawing Guest Speaker

I felt that this guest speaker had a very interesting approach to his artwork.  His art bridged all different types of media while keeping the strong theme of African American art throughout them.  His work in video took scenes from movies like Foxy Brown and distorted them using a mirror filter on them.  This created abstract images while keeping the general theme presented in the clip intact.  The emotion for the Foxy Brown piece was fear.  This was supposed to symbolize the fear after the 9/11 attacks in America.  His paintings used digital photography in an interesting way also.  He took images of famous African American figures and created their silhouettes in bright yellows, reds, oranges, and purples.  These colors help to relay the concept of African culture.  Another series of paintings he did had printed out black and white images of Famous black figures with the same yellows reds oranges and purples, painted lines leading to the figure.    This created an interesting composition because for the most part the figures were fairly small compared to the brightly colored lines, creating an interesting juxtaposition.  Also the fact that the rest of the canvas was a stark white created a jolting and sterile feeling surrounding the figure and the lines.  His third series of paintings took out the colorful lines and had a much more ridged and docile feeling to them.  They usually were comprised of a white canvas with a single black line only turning at 90 degree angles.  Then somewhere in the painting there would be a black and white print of some historic African American moment.  I recall one that had a picture of a Black Panther meeting.  I personally felt that these were the most developed of all his paintings.  The images were very carefully placed on the canvas.  The pictures were in theme with the line in that they were about the same thickness as the line and would match up with an angle of the line somehow.  However, the line as an entire mass was considerably larger than the picture.  This created an unusual dialogue between the two subjects.  There was one massive figure that was simple and monotone, and then a much smaller figure that had a wide range of black whites and grays and was very detailed. 

2 Altered Photos

Online Gallery

egon schiele

egon schiele

Jeremy Fish

Retna & El Mac

David Choe

Pose

Pose

Sam Flores

Swoon

PMA Part II (Soothsayer's Recompense)

What drew me to this painting is how it is executed and the context in which it is displayed.    The room is filled with paintings abstracted by cubism and brought to life by a wide range of vibrant, highly saturated colors.  A perfect example of this it Pablo Picasso’s Three Musicians.  The bright color pallet and jagged geometric shapes are in stark contrast to the muted colors and comparatively simplistic composition of Soothsayer’s Recompense.  When compared to its neighbors, this painting kind of sticks out like a sore thumb.  Like I said before, this painting has a very muted pallet.  The yellows seen in the arch way, the shadows cast on the ground, and the train station in the background have all been brought down in saturation to a very dark mustard color, in some areas nearing gray.  Even the highlights on the white statue have been brought down with some yellows.  Meanwhile the shadows cast on the statue are a yellowish brown.  The horizon is also a yellow towards the bottom and then as it progresses towards the top of the canvas it turns in to a deep greenish blue.  I think these colors had a major role in attracting me to this painting.  Not only does this pallet stick out among its counterparts, but it also created a strong and uniquely subdued mood and tone for the painting.  This painting reminds me of when I would visit my granduncle down in San Antonio with my Grandparents.  When I look at this painting, I see a similar pallet to that of the desert area in San Antonio.  I am also reminded of the vast emptiness of my granduncle’s ranch, I see this mimicked in the barren space in front of the train station and surrounding the statue.   The room does not really smell like anything. There is probably a dehumidifier or something to keep the paintings from being damaged so the smell is not really having much effect on my interpretation of the painting.  While in the museum I did not hear any conversations about the piece from other people however, I feel that there was a conversation between me and the piece.  When looking at it, I wonder “Where is that?” the piece responds with the palm trees and what appears to be clay buildings native to south western America and Mexico.  I also ask “what’s going on with the wind?” If you look at the flags on the top of the building and the smoke from the train, they are both being blown in opposite directions.  I wonder “What is going on with that clock and why are there only 11 numbers on it? Is this some type of dream world or a real place that has been tweaked by Chirico’s mind?” As far as scale goes, this painting is a similar size to the other ones in the room (about 50 inches X 70 inches).  I feel that the painting benefits from being around paintings of the same size.  That way the subject matter is what makes the paintings stand out as opposed to how large or small a painting is.