Pop Art- conclusion

The Pop Artists made their art out of drawing attention to the consumerist nature of American culture. To Art critics’ dismay, household objects such as tinned food, icons of the mass media and such ‘low art’ conventions such as comic book drawing now became the subjects of ‘high art.’ Pop Artists had correctly identified the things that were important to the average American citizen, and the content, means of production, and location of their art all reflected this.
In many ways Pop Art seemed satirical, wry and at times outright critical. The images made at this time have immortalised an image of post-war America as superficial, image-obsessed and unconcerned with any real depth or subtlety.However the means of production meant that artists were reaping the benefits of this culture. Instead of labouring over an oil painting for months, artists now could print a simple image hundreds of times money could be made for every print sold, and also galleries would now accept paying high prices for a piece of work that had taken very little time to complete. It was as though artists were portraying Americans as ignorant and lazy, but celebrating and taking advantage of just that

A dance to the Music of the time (Nicolas Poussin)

100 years before Frag David was influenced by poussin made great great use of composition, withoutstructure he thought he'd be obliterated (thrown away) the yellow colouring was derived from his notionof life, Eserderic-specialist knowledge.

This painting effects you interlectually, images are of this nature are hard to come by in this day and age.

(Music of time) dancing to it, represents wealth, poverty, over indulging in lifes poverty.Apollo in his chariate manifestation of the sky.

Research facts- Meraud Guevara

Meraud Guevara was born Guinness in london, from 1924 she studied at the slade school of Art in London.With the sculptor Archipenko in New York, and the painter Picabia in Paris.

In 1929 she married the painter Alvaro Guevara in London and they moved to france.

Alvaro died in1951 and Meraud continued to live and work in both Paris and provence.

She painted landscapes,still lifes, abstract composition on plaster and imaginary portraits, of which this picture is a major example.

Her portraits present singular women, who sit in mysterious interiors.They combined a powerful physical presence with a strong sense of inner life.

They often wear hats and are accompanied by small dogs.

Life and times of Picasso

After trips to Paris between 1900-1902, Picasso decided to settle there in 1904 where he was influenced by Paul Gauguin and the group of symbolist painters called the Nabis.

The influence of Edgar Degas and Toulous lautric is clearly shown in the blue room, 1901- which was the start of his evolution towards the blue period.

In this phase the colour blue was very frequent and dominated his work contrasting the theme of portraying human suffering and misery, in many case as also reflecting the style of Elgreco in the use of elongated figures.

(Rose period)

Whilst in Paris Picasso met Fernando Oliver shortly after ariving there, he was the first of companions he would influence there style,theme, and mood of his work.

His mood changed quite a lot after he found happiness and joy in his life, these feelings are expressed in his changing pallete to reds and pinks.

(Modern Era)

Picassoo and his fellow Artist George Braque, who was french are well known for creating a abstract style called cubism.

Cubism meaning a object which is often shown from several different angles at the same time, the majority of Picasso's work was resolved around the use of different shapes.

Picasso had many great paintings but many agree this his greatest work is the large maral (wall painting) that he produced in 1937 to protest th bombing of the basque village of Guernica during the Spanish cival war (1936-39).

This particular painting is a combination of nightmarish images of the suffering and destruction that went on during this period, its highyly expressive cubist arrangement.

Francis Picabia

This was originally a relatively naturalistic portrait of a man pointing to a skull, the traditional reminder of death after it was returned unsold, picabia chose to obliterate the features of the face, tranforming into a void overlaid with strange symbols that may have be derived from the medieval catalan frescos.



Picabia surrounded his figure with sexually suggestive hanging objects based on these symbols, while the horus are a reference to cuckaoldry.



The misleading date "1925" was also painted in later, reflecting picabias subversive sense of humour.

(A shaft of light)
The fall of light has been carefully observed and calculated so that it blances the pile of objects, and highlights the central object of vanita's, the human skull the principle reminder of vanitys.

(Empty shell)
As well as a symbol of wealth, the shell, which is clearly empty is also more direct reminder of human mortality.
To us, such an exotic shell is fasinating curiosity, but we can no more claim perminate possession of it then the lower life form that once inhabited the shell.
"For that which befalleth the sons of men befalleth beasts... As the one dieth so dieth the other.

(Japenese sword)
The sword is a symbol of worldly power and indicates that even the might of arms cannot defeat death.
And no matter how mighty a man becomes "He that is higher than the highest regardeth"

(The shawn, an insrument of love)

The musical instruments in the painting directly indicate the Vanity of the pursuit of knowledge of that Art.But musical are also symbols of love.
Music is traditionally part and parcel of courtship and lovemaking this shawn ( a medieval form of oboe) and the other pipes traditionally represent a male form, and the swelling form of the light and other string instruments represents the female body.

Anish Kapoor_ life & work

Anish Kapoor was from mixed parentage, his father was from india and his mother was from Iraq.

Born in Bombay and brought up in india in the 70's kapoor always felt like he didn't belong in that country he felt left out as if he was a foreigner because of his parents background.

His main aim in life during the earlier years was not just to be a sculpture, he grew up wanting to be a engineer.

So for six months of his life he went to an engineering college, but then he came to realise that it wasnt what he expected, so he came to London to study at two Art schools.

While he was at these Art schools, kapoor learnt about his own identity as an Artist.

At the tender age of 22 kapoor went back home to his native country India, still having that lingering feeling that he really didn't belong there anymore, because of his new lifestyle and view of life, he picked picked up a habits that were not in the nature of indians, these things are what made himstand out like a foreigner in his own homeland.

He also felt a similar way in England, but this was to be expected, to feel this way in your own homeland was quite depressing.

These feelings were brought across in his work, because the sculptures he produces have a uncertain quality about them, which relates to himself.

Kapoor is very experimentalin his approach to his work, he uses mixed media such as paper,string,twigs, and plaster to allow his ideas to flow and develope.

He never has a drawing of what he wants his sculpture to look like, because he does not know exactly how he wants it to be.

He messes around with the equipment he has, and just waits until he sees something he thinks would be suitable for a sculpture piece.

Anish Kapoor has his own stone masonry and sculpturesstore outside where he leaves his finished and unfinished work.

The hardest part of working in stone is getting rid of the mass ( carving away the centre).

Kapoor does a lot of commissions for councils and other organisations.

Kapoor worked on a project on a site in America in Chicago, the sculpture can cost up to hundreds of thousands of pounds and kapoor has to consider the weather,ageing and safety has to be thought of when making it.

Anish Kapoor

Anish Kapoor represented Britain in Venice in 1991 he won the preturner award in 1991, he was also sponsored by the Tate gallery.

He had a record breaking exhibition in the haward gallery in london, lisson group-kapoor was a member of this group becasue they all exhibit at the lisson gallery.

They were breaking new ground and working in ways that have never been done before.

Tony grad was making sculptures out of small fragments, and kapoor was using shapes that have never been seen in Britain previously.

He covered his sculptures in coloured powdered pigments that gave the work a lightness that constrasted the heavy metal.

Kapoor brought a breath of fresh air to british sculpture through his use of materials.

Kapoor was the lightest in his approach to sculpture and was mainly known for producing beautiful pieces of work.

Its not often scupltures use color so frequently as he did, he uses the most natural pigments which are as pure as they come, hes a realest and painter.

The majority of his work is about form and shapes, and the illusions in colour, there are some idian influences in his work he carried over the different shapes and food colouring from the indian markets.

Colours such as yellow and red were based on the indian on the indian spices, you could say the indian market had a integral impact on kapoors work.

Kapoors sculptures which demonstrates his example work, make it look as if its a actual picture, when its really just a big illusion.

Modernism and the arts

Modernism is a term which refers to both a specific period in history and particular impulse.
This is largely considered to have began in the 18th Century, around the same time a the french revolution.
This is a period reflected by revolution, industrialisation, a decrease within the religous belief (in the west) this being the peak edcline of the empire, and the polarisation between political ideal's ( namely: Fascism and communism, demoncracy and totalitariamism: capitalism and socialism).
Between all of these instances we degfined chiefly by a deep held belief in the idea of progress towards a prosperous world.
Believin in this is a utopia led by monumental advances and sacrifices being made in order to capitulate humanity from a cruel and barbaric past.
leading towards a state of harmony and plenitude.

Feminism

Feminism is a belif that all women should have equal rights,such as, political, social, sexual, interlectual and economic rights to men.
There are a number of movements involved, theories, and philosophies, all of which concern gender differences, that orchestrate equality for women and that campaigne for womens rights and interests.
There are three waves in the history of feminism, they are as follows, Nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the second was the 60's and 1970's, the 3rd extending from the 90's.

Feminism has had a very drastic affect on predominant perpectives, changing a wide range of areas within the western society, ranging from culture to law.


Feminist adivist have made it there duty to campaigne for womens legal rights, such as (rights of contact, property rights, voting rights) to enable women rights towards bodily integrity and atomony.
For abortion rights, and for reproduction rights ( this includes access to contraception and quality prenatal care) this would enable protection for women and girls suffering from domestic violence, sexual harassment and rape for workplace rights includingmaternity leave and equal pay and also against other forms of discrimination.
Most feminist movements and theories had leaders who were predominatly middle classwhite women from western europe and North america.
However, since sojourner truths 1852 speech to american feminists, women of other races have proposed alternative feminism.
This trend moved forward drastically during the 60's with civil rights movement in the united states and the capitulationof european colonialism in Africa the caribbean parts of latin America and Southeast Asia.

Semiotics-the beginning

Semiotics can best be decribed,as a study of of signs..as unorthodox as it may sound, they relate in a similar way to linquistics, only difference being semiotics are based on visual actions rather than words.
People usually relate to signs in everyday life, things such as road signs,pub signs and star signs.
Most people will probably relate semiotics to "visual signs", you could prove this hunch by saying they are also drawings, paintings and photographs, and by now you'd probably be directed towards arts & photography sections.
But if you were to be thick-skinned and told am it also includes words, sounds and "body language" they may be sceptical and wonder wonder what these aspects have in common and how anyone could possibly study such a desperate phenomena.Studying semiotics may have you reading "the signs" feeling slightly insane and eccentric when communication has not been ceased.

Semiotics began to become a major approach to cultural studies in the late 1960s, partly as a result of the work of Roland Barthes. The translation into English of his popular essays in a collection entitled Mythologies (Barthes 1957), followed in the 1970s and 1980s by many of his other writings, greatly increased scholarly awareness of this approach. Writing in 1964, Barthes declared that 'semiology aims to take in any system of signs, whatever their substance and limits; images, gestures, musical sounds, objects, and the complex associations of all of these, which form the content of ritual, convention or public entertainment: these constitute, if not languages, at least systems of signification' (Barthes 1967, 9). The adoption of semiotics in Britain was influenced by its prominence in the work of the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS) at the University of Birmingham whilst the centre was under the direction of the neo-Marxist sociologist Stuart Hall (director 1969-79). Although semiotics may be less central now within cultural and media studies (at least in its earlier, more structuralist form), it remains essential for anyone in the field to understand it. What individual scholars have to assess, of course, is whether and how semiotics may be useful in shedding light on any aspect of their concerns. Note that Saussure's term, 'semiology' is sometimes used to refer to the Saussurean tradition, whilst 'semiotics' sometimes refers to the Peircean tradition, but that nowadays the term 'semiotics' is more likely to be used as an umbrella term to embrace the whole field

Popular Art- Pop art

Pop Art originated in New York in the late 1950’s/early ‘60s, and intentionally subverted critical ideas of what constituted ‘art.’ Household objects and celebrities faces were the subjects:Suddenly, T.V. dinners and canned spaghetti, department store dresses and blue suede shoes, tailfins and tires were the subject of paintings and sculptures gracing the window fronts of art galleries.
Claes Oldenburg, Tom Wesselmann, Roy Lichtenstein, James Rosenquist, and, most famously Andy Warhol were among the leading names of Pop Art. Most of the Pop Artists had previously worked in commercial advertising and printing. Printing presses were used to quickly produce hundreds of standardised images which could then be mass-distributed. Andy Warhol was one of the first to do this; instead of selling unique pieces of work for a high price, he preferred to produce multiple silk-screened copies which were sold for a low price but which together made up large profits. The ideas of mass and standardisation would be seen therefore both in the fact that one piece of art work contained dozens of cola bottles, and also that that piece was itself reproduced again and again.Therefore art became visible to greater sections of the population and to lower classes, because of its positioning images were seen in conjunction with advertising and printed on clothing and accessories, instead of hidden away in galleries and its content where as traditional fine or ‘high’ art requires some academic learning for the viewer to know the correct ways of appreciating it, tins of baked beans were recognisable to all and needed little interpretation.

Andy Warhol- Early career

Andy warhol demonstrated early artistic skills and studied commercial Art at the School of Fine Arts Carnegie Institute of Technology in Pittsburgh.In 1949, he moved to New york city and then went on to achieve a very successful career in magazine Illustration & advertisement.
During the 1950's, he came to prominance for his Whimsical ink drawings of shoe Advertisments.
Warhol used a various of techniques, loose,blotted ink style, these figured in some of earliest showings in New York at Bodley Gallery.
with the monumental expansion of Record industrys and the introduction of Vinyl Records, Hi fi, and Sterophonic recordings, RCA Records called upson warhols services hiring him along side another Freelance artist, Sid Maurer, to design Album covers and promotional material.