I did two separate pieces to demonstrate the different phases Whitten went through while he was experimenting with art. The first, being my 'Tools' piece, I tried to keep a warm color scheme on. Using light colors, I tried to focus on the marks the tools would create. Using an afro comb I embedded into the wet orange and yellow paint that I used as my background, I created marks that highlighted the rings of red from a plastic cup I decided to implement as a top layer once the wet paint dried. My next piece focused on cooler colors, like the 9/11 piece I saw at the BMA. Using a plastic fork, staples, tissues, bleach powder and dark and light hues of blue, I tried to bring the diamond in the middle almost up and out of the page to make it the focal point, even with a lot going on around it. 

I definitely learned a lot this year. Art class has helped me look at the creative side of things and not keep such a structured mindset. In the beginning, I was a little hesitant to 'pour' it all out on the canvas and remain unstructured in some cases, but as the year went on I realized that breaking out of your shell and painting what you feel makes your artwork that much more unique and highlights who you are as an individual person. I love how you can look at a piece of art and know who did it just by the style of it. This class was a lot of fun and informative, and there's really nothing that I would change about it. 

Visual Analysis

  The quote I picked by Jean Baudrillard was: "Americans may have no identity, but they do have wonderful teeth."
       This quote stood out to me because I noticed it contained a hint of irony and holds some truth to it. As generations pass, Americans lose their identity more and more as they succumb to societies' standards of, for example, social media, as well as mainstream topics that reserve all of their attention such as celebrity headlines, etc. My project focuses on an analogous color scheme that includes magenta, light blue and royal blue. I thought these colors mixed well in accordance to the pictures I picked of teeth as well as the tye dye clippings that I thought would fit in nicely with the magentas and the different shades of blue.
       There's a reason I chose these colors. The color magenta in my mind symbolizes happiness, and I wanted to paint a picture which included both the emotions of happiness (which represent the Americans' nice teeth in the quote) and the void emptiness of what it means to have no identity. The light blue plays up the magenta a little and creates a cheerful and almost 'fake' mood that can relate to the 'nice teeth' aspect of the quotation. The royal blue (as well as the black markings) can play down the pretty magenta and light blue hues and give my painting a bit of a depressing vibe. The pictures of teeth also hold different definitions. The pretty ones relate to the happy mood I'm trying to convey, while the scary and dark ones play on the 'no identity' aspect of Jean Baudrillard's quote.

Postmodernism Introduction: I was a bit confused by this reading. It provided me with explaining all of the different types of ethnic cultures and traditions, but I failed to grasp a direct definition of postmodernism. What I understood is that all of these different mixes of cultures blend together to create an "earthquake" of expression. All of these blends form small examples of new ways of thinking and viewing the world in distinct perspectives constantly. We're evolving into our postmodern definitions facet by facet, and artists now are evolving their styles to match this progressive movement. These work of art reflect the postmodern condition.

Hyperreal and imaginary: This reading discussed the ideological ways of life in America. Imaginary examples such as Disneyland are set up throughout America as deterrences that "set up in order to rejuvenate in reverse the fiction of the real." It makes us believe we are in a fake land, one that embodies different emotions that the 'real' America may not bring because of its realistic characteristics that remind people of the worries in their lives.


Frederick Jameson: What I understood from this reading is that all of the different cultural interpretations must express themselves through a certain medium. The different ways of showing their feelings and emotions through art can manifest themselves through this movement without being left in the dark. Instead of being "a coexistence of a host of distinct forces whose effectivity is undecidable" these expressions can now be categorized.

George Kubler

Throughout the reading, the excerpt that I found most interesting is the following: 

         "Our choice of the 'history of things' is more than a euphemism to explain the bristling ugliness of 'material culture.' This term is used by anthropologists to distinguish ideas, or 'mental culture,' from artifacts. But the 'history of things' is intended to reunite ideas and objects under the rubric of visual forms: the term includes both artifacts and works of art, both replicas and unique examples, both tools and expressions---in short all materials worked by human hands under the guidance of connected ideas developed in temporal sequence. From all these things a shape in time emerges." 

This is an interesting take on the history of the imprints we as humans have left on the world, which trace back as far as we've recorded it. Kubler views it as more of an idea,  it unifies the different types of effects we've caused on the world--whether good or bad, and puts these concepts under the umbrella of the "history of things." Once we've gathered enough under this giant umbrella, we then can step back and view the big picture, which results in a "shape in time." 

Data visualization: Escaping Flatland by Tufte

I found this reading particularly interesting because it gave light to some new ways in which we can avoid the false perspective a two-dimensional "flatland" can have for us when we view an artist's work. Because we're forced to now look at another work of art through a digitalized computer screen, we lose the connection the artist is trying to make to the viewer, to a two-dimensional surface that doesn't properly portray the work of art's meaning that the artist was trying to demonstrate. Instead, Tufte offers new design strategies that may help in sharpening information resolution on our computer screens as well as the resolving power of their paper and video screen.

In the first picture, the sunglasses case against the paper seems a yellowish cream color, while the paper takes on a grayish blueish tone. In the second picture, since the lighting has darkened a bit and a shadow has formed, the paper seems a bit more bright and a neon-type white on the right side, while dark and grey have formed on the left. The sunglasses case has darkened into a darker hue of the same yellowish cream color it was in the first picture. 

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