Art & social change

                                    Art and it's ability to alter people's lives

              Vic Munoz in his art project in the documentary "Wasteland" changed the lives of people who lived in the garbage or otherwise known as garbage pickers. These garbage pickers lived in Brazil and what most people take for granted: access to food, water, shelter these people didn't have. They're situation wasn't pretty, living in the garbage ,struggling everyday, etc. One of the pickers said "There is no future" and it was hard to refute that. Everyday was an uphill battle for them having to deal with the physical and emotional exhaust. It was a heartbreaking scene that's for sure. Munoz however showed them that there was a way out, a solution to get out of they're situation that was in front of they're eyes without them noticing it.

             Munoz proposed that they take the very garbage around them and turn it into something beautiful something that they could call art and sell it to help them and their cause. Which changed the lives of all the garbage pickers in the process. When they sold the first painting for 50,000 US dollars you could see all the emotions the garbage pickers were going through. Showing them how art is more than just what meets the eyes. Today there artworks have roamed across the globe on some of the famous museum's in the world and have changed the garbage pickers lives for the better. 

            This documentary is something that has personally touched me seeing what they go through on a daily basis is tough. What i took away from this is that life will beat you down to your knees and it will be very hard to get back up on your feet and that even though it seems unlikely things will get better even if it's in a way that's unexpected which in this case is art. I saw this quote somewhere and it stated "when we are at out lowest point we are open to the greatest change" and i think that is what ultimately the director tried to showcase.

Performance & video art

Bill Viola(short bibliography)

    Bill Viola has a unique style that separates himself from all the other artists. His style is video art, he once said "life is too fast and i wanted to be able to slow it down.." and all his video's are very slow paced and has this meditative element to it as well. His influences are his desire to slow down things in a very thoughtful matter and also wants to do it in a way that doesn't involve all the violence that the mass media showcases. He described that he want his work to "slap" people in the face and "wake" up.

Slideshow outline

    slide 1: Introduction to Bill Viola

    slide 2: Viola's influences 

    slide 3: Viola's video art style

    slide 4: Examples of his art 

    slide 5: What those examples represent 

    slide 6: Sources

   

Different century art stlyes

Surrealism and Abstract Expressionism 

The art work to the left is titled "The persistence of memory" by Salvador Dalí. The style is surrealism and was made in 1931. It can be seen that the clocks in the painting represent time. Time in this case however is drooping. Along with this is what appear to be an infinite space of empty land. There also appears to be a warped image in the foreground.

This piece of art titled "BLUE, ORANGE, RED" by Mark Rothko created in 1961 is a perfect example of abstract expressionism. I believe the red is representative of joy or passion. The blue color is sorrow considering that is a dark blue and bold as well almost overwhelming the other colors. The orange i think is perhaps peace?. The thing with abstract expressionism is that it's abstract so artist express their feelings in ways that you have to think there's more than what meets the eye and try to interpret it the way the artist meant for people to interpret it.

MOMA, art after 1945

Bill Viola

   Bill Viola is an artist who isn't a sculptor, painter, or photographer. He instead has a form of art called "video art". He spoke how he despises the violence shown in mainstream media especially it being exposed to young people. His videos have emphasis on emotions or state of minds such as love, life, death, the human conciseness and spirituality. What i found interesting is that in some of his famous works such as "tristan's ascension" he describes water as a double edge sword saying that on one side there is the destructive force such as floods and tsunami's and on the other side there is the side that serves as a life force. It's something that caught my eye since the norm is that fire is the force of life and he said that fire can be used to keep you "warm" and "cook" your food when describing "fire women". Viola is an interesting artist who's work intrigues many including myself and it'll be a pleasure to find out more about him.

Early 20th century(Dada collage)

Late 18th & 19th Centuries

              1877, a group of painters began to oppose academic doctrines in romantic ideals and turned to the portrayal of contemporary life. They for the first time took their portraits outside and went ahead to illustrate what the eyes see rather then what the mind knows. The subjects that these artists would depict included landscapes and ordinary scenes. This period is called Impressionism, The impressionist saw the beauty of the world as a gift but had an objective and less emotional manner to that. One of the popular themes among the impressionists was contemporary middle class people enjoying leisure activities. One of the famous painters of Impressionism, Claude Monet a french painter is considered to be a founder of impressionist painting. He was responsible for a series of 25 paintings titled "Haystacks" and is known for it's dramatic use in repetition to show differences in perception of light across various themes of days, seasons as well as types of weathers.                      
      The picture to the left depicts a impressionist painting titled "sunrise" by the famous painter Claude Monet which is a good example of an impressionist painting if you examine the painting there isn't much detail yet there are bold colors such as the green blue and the orange from the sun reflecting on the sky.        





                                                                                                                                                                                                                 

  Post impressionism on the other hand believed in a free interpretation of nature, not to see things but to see through them to a significance in reality deeper than what superficial appearance gave. The painting on the left known as "the starry night" by Vincent Van Gogh who by the way was one of the artists that led the post impressionist movement depicts what post impressionism is all about they used bold colors, real life subject matter but used more geometric shapes such as the circles, buildings illustrated in the painting to the left.                                      

Metropolitan Museum, What i learned!

Johannes Vermeer who was dutch named this famous artwork "Allegory of the Catholic Faith" in which the theme is how the snake in the painting represents Satan because in religion he is often depicted as one and you could see him being crushed. Which i assume God was the one who is responsible for that also you see the women with a globe at the bottom of her feet which i would assume means she had the world at her feet. This painting is from the renaissance due to the religious aspect of it.









                                                                                                    With that being said here's my attempt at trying to recreate this famous artwork.

Caravaggio born in Italy named this artwork "The Denial of Saint Peter" here we could automatically tell this is a baroque artwork as baroque artwork was known to have really intense emotions or to be dramatic. You could also see that there is only natural light entering in which they are standing and their surroundings are dark.

Here's my go at it as you can see i'm not really the greatest artist in the world but i think it looks somewhat ok.

Elements & Principles of Art

               
   
    One way artists unified their work can be seen above. The eagle has a snake on top of his head which signals divinity.

  Asymmetrical balance has in ways more liveliness and has more intense colors

Here the mountain on the right is balanced by the left side by the space that has nothing.

Scale can greatly change artwork for instance a artist may decide that one 1 inch is the equivalent of 20 feet.

                                                                                                                                                                         Here in this image the subject matter, the eyeball is huge and so people can interpret this in many different ways for instance i interpret it as people are watching you all the time

Antiquity

   One thing the Greek and Egyptian had in common when it came to art was that the Egyptian's had their sculpture clothed while the Greek had them completely naked and believed that the human body was the highest form of beauty. The Egyptians tended to sculpt their sculptures so that they have no emotion meanwhile Greek art was more "modern" as you would say having emotions and their bodies fully nude. Also Egyptian art was static and didn't show any real movement while on the other hand for Greek art they had movement which would sometimes tell a story. Whilst Egyptian art had was more towards religion hence all the pharaoh's and their belief in the afterlife. Greek art on the contrary was more interested in philosophy then religion.
         Roman art is very much based on Greek art. The majority of their sculptures are based on mythological beings. On top of that the Romans had many types of art including relief's , sculptures and many more. Roman art was also more known for it's architecture and as a result created large stone buildings.

Introduction

My first blog assignment

My name is Kenny Gaspar Perez am i currently in Laguardia community college and majoring in computer science. I like to play/watch soccer , i watch anime when i can. and i'm also a video game addict. I see college as a place to grow intellectual and also maturely, i also see it as a way to enhance my education. I also hope to help lift my family out of poverty and reunite with the rest of my family in their respective countries. What inspired me to major in computer science was that i had a sudden realization that people who designed the software in my phone , video game , the computer i'm typing into right now i want to be part of those people who design those things. As a result i hope to land a job in the video game industry one day.