My artist is Max Ernst.  My goals for my project are to somehow incorporate Ernst's most influential artistic techniques, decalcomania and frottage, into one complete composition, and to mimic his greatness.  Decalcomania refers to the pressing of a sheet of paper dipped in ink onto another sheet of paper, a surrealist technique which yields unpredictable images.  This technique will be particularly difficult to mimic, since Ernst would do this and then edit the unpredictable image into something substantial.  Frottage, a method developed by Ernst himself, is the rubbing of a pastel or pencil over an uneven surface.  I'd like to incorporate these very difficult techniques into my work even though they seem extremely challenging to do together.  As of now, I do not know which image I will be portraying with my piece, though I may go in blind and see what the outcome is.  Since Ernst was a surrealist, abstractness is very often the theme of his art.  Most of his paintings were on canvas, but since I do not own any canvas, I will be attempting this on my own Bristol paper.  So far I have not made significant progress, besides playing around with the techniques.  My results are very messy and experimental so I would like to not post pictures just yet.

The Shape of Time

This reading was an excerpt from George Kubler's The Shape of Time, which introduces an entirely new method of approaching and studying art history.  Though difficult to understand at times, it is clear that this excerpt is attempting to impose on the reader an abstract view of the lives of artists and the history of art entirely.  Kubler begins by discussing "The Limitations of Biography", stating that biography is wrong in attempting to reconstruct the evolution of the person of the artist, to authenticate attributed works, and to discuss their meaning.  He says that while biography is an adequate means of scanning artistic substance, it should be able to answer the question of the artists relations to what has preceded and what will follow them.  My interpretation of this is that the Kubler is suggesting that rather than solely discussing and analyzing the works of an artist, biographies should make an attempt to relate the artist to the works which have influenced him/her and the the works which he/she had an influence on.  Kubler next makes the rather ambiguous comparison between artists and train tracks, saying that to study art in the context of one artist rather than as a whole, is to study the railroad of a country only in the perspective of one of its travelers.  In other words, one must relate the works of an artist to the genre as a whole, rather than trying to use his work to define the entire genre.  The next, most intriguing part of the passage concerned the means through which an artist is able to be successful.  He makes the very important point that the difference between artists is generally not a difference in talent, but a difference in time and opportunity.  For example, those who follow very famous artists generally do not achieve an equivalent success, but rather amplify the success of their predecessors.  Though talent. dedication, and persistence are definitely key to an artist's fame, success cannot be achieved if the time isn't right for it.  Next, Kubler compares art with biology, a comparison that even he admits is faulty.  He states that like the leaves of a plant, the style of art begins small and slowly evolves into something much greater.  And as there are different species of plant, there are different styles of art, all of which evolve differently and at their own pace.  He then briefly discusses the essentiality of communication between authors to exchange ideas and styles, but moves on to address the invisible chain, a tie between an artist and previous events which restricts the artist from deviating from prior events, limiting his creativity.  Fom my understanding, an example of this is biblical events, whose art cannot deviate far from the cultural norm while still being acceptable.  He also makes the argument that every artist has an obsession which is traceable in all her works, a statement which I either fail to understand or cannot agree with.  I believe that while each artist has his or her own style, they can at the same time choose to deviate from such and still achieve success, though potentially not as great.  I believe it would be smart of an artist to diversify in an attempt to see which style would be received the best.  All in all, this was a very interesting read, though confusing and ambiguous at times, which made some very difficult to argue points regarding the history of art as a whole.

Escaping Flatland

I thought this was a very interesting read.  Though difficult to understand at times, and requiring me to go back and read it over in order to fully grasp the ideas being conveyed, I really liked the idea of this reading.  Part of my lack of understanding was due to the enigmatic language used throughout to describe the different methods.  However, despite my lack of comprehension of a fair amount of these words, I was able to derive the general idea of the passage. 

It begins by stating that our world is “caught up in the two-dimensionality of the endless flatlands of paper and video screen”, establishing the idea that far too much of what we see in our daily lives is simply two dimensional, but states that there are several ways in which we can “escape this flatland”.  In particular, this passage focuses on methods by which we can both increase the number of dimensions displayed on a flat piece of paper as well as increase the data density.  He also describes why 3-dimensional displays, especially that of the solar system, fails in adequately providing basic understanding because the focus on the complexity of the actual model draws away from its basic concept.  This is the basis through which he argues that multiple dimensions can be portrayed on flatland, such as in the case of sunspots or railroads.  One thing I was confused by was how exactly the method of viewing sun spots incorporates a piece of paper in order to amplify the image.  This was the technique which Galileo used, and he was able to depict the most accurate image of the sun at the time.  Through his understanding of dimensions, he was able to refute beliefs that sunspots were simply stars or satellites.  As time went on, methods for marking the locations of sunspots vastly improved.  Scheiner fabricated a model of tracking them which was more complex than that of Galileo, but not quite as advanced as those of Maunder or Fisher, which made use of parallel sequencing to enhance dimensionality and density.  It is amazing how far they came and how much people were able to improve on the work of Galileo.  The next example was particularly interesting.  It describes the system by which Java was able to create a 2-dimensional chart which was still able to accurately tell the movement of trains along railroads.  There are many ways in which we can “escape flatland” and portray multiple dimensions even in a way that would normally be 2-dimensional.

Artist Research

1) Andy Warhol: Andy Warhol's work always intrigued me. His use of color, contrast, and repetition is his tactic for grabbing the viewer's attention, and it works. Also, Warhol seems to have a tendency to depict major figures of the past; Marilyn Monroe, Audrey Hepburn, Michael Jackson, etc. These are a few of the people who grab my attention the most. I've always been a person more interested in the past than the present. I have pictures of Audrey Hepburn and Marilyn Monroe hanging in my dorm room as well as my room at home. Also, his use of repetition gives his work a sort of systematic feel, which I like. Being a numbers person, I'm attracted to things that are systematic and organized which makes his work so pleasing to my eye. Since Warhol is basically the founder of the pop art movement, he would be a really interesting artist to research.

2) Bridget Riley: When I looked up Bridget Riley's work, I was instantly drawn to it. Again, her approach is very systematic and organized in such a way that it forms optical illusions. I enjoy her lack of bright colors and abstractness. Everything she makes seems to form some kind of pattern, but no two are the same. Trying to learn to create your own optical illusions seems to me to be very difficult and I think Riley would be a really intriguing artist to look into and research for that reason.

3) Salvador Dali: Salvador Dali is a little bit out of my comfort zone; His painting style is very abstract and unusual, but in such an interesting way that you can't help but stare. When I look at his work, my mind wanders through it and it ignites my critical thinking. His style of morphing different things together in a way that flows and pleases the eye is so unique and compelling. Also, the surrealism behind every piece only draws you in even further. There seems to be a hidden message behind every piece and that's what makes you think so hard, but they're also free to interpretation. His style and character seem to be really unique and really interesting to research.

Ways of Seeing by John Berger

In the reading Ways of Seeing, Berger discusses how we 'see' art and other things and the significance of that. One of the statements he makes in the reading is he tells us that "the way we see things is affected by what we know or what we believe". I personally agree with this statement; each person's mind is unique and contains different types of thoughts and knowledge, meaning the way we process what we see is also unique to the individual. Some minds are more imaginative, viewing the world from a more creative point of view, while some are more systematic, viewing the world from a more literal point of view. Berger brings up the point about how when one is in love, the sight of their beloved cannot be matched by words or embraced. I believe this statement does support the previous one, but I also believe that the feeling sometimes varies from person to person, since everyone is unique. Overall, I think that this reading was much less difficult and confusing than the previous ones thus far. The paragraphs were laid out clearly and with direction, the vocabulary was straightforward and easy to get across, and the points being made actually made some sort of sense. I found it to be a pretty interesting read, which is somewhat surprising; who would've thought a reading on art could be interesting?

Texture Mashup

These are the textures I chose to incorporate into my project 

The Thinking Eye--Paul Klee

For some reason, I find myself having a very hard time grasping the material involved in this reading. First and foremost, I found the layout made it extremely difficult to follow along. I did not find any true structure to the reading itself, either. The points being made were hard to follow and almost looked to me as if they were just thrown in without any real introduction. And don't even get me started on the diagrams accompanied with the text, which seemed to serve no purpose to me at all. Maybe if they were incorporated in a more systematic manner, I would have been able to connect them to the reading a bit more.

The most exhausting part of this reading was trying to make out all the metaphors involved in it. I have always been a very literal person; interpretation is not something I'm very fond of. I like when things are set out organized and clearly, instead of having to work to figure out the meanings on my own, which simply consumes time and confuses me. 

When I started reading, I was immediately turned off by the confusing words and hidden meanings. In particular, the last paragraph on the first page states "Genesis as formal movement is the essence of the work of art. In the beginning the motif, the harnessing of energy, sperm. Work as form-making in the natural material sense: primordial feminine. Work as form-deciding sperm: primordial masculine." This statement just does not make sense in my head. After reading this over numerous times, the one thing I took away is that the author is trying to relate the creation of forms to the creation of everything by God. Now, is that true? Probably not. Maybe it was just the whole Genesis thing that threw me off. But this confusion carried on throughout the entire reading.

I should clarify that I am not trying to be mainly just critical of this reading, because I bet that if I could interpret and understand the author better, this would have been an enjoyable experience. But unfortunately, it wasn't. I am, however, looking forward to going over this reading in class so I can get a better understanding of the main points the author was making and how everybody else in the class interpreted them.