Project #9 Favorite Film Review

Wristcutters: A Love Story

Wrist cutters is a dark humor or black comedy/love story about the afterlife of people who commit suicide. The movie opens with the main character Zia who offs himself after his Girlfriend breaks up with him and after he passes to the other side he finds himself in another world where everything just seems to be a little bit worse than on earth. This movie has an amazing soundtrack compiled entirely of musicians who offed themselves. Zia finds out through passing that his girlfriend has offed herself as well and so he begins to look for her with a fellow lost soul, and friend that he has just recently acquainted. They road trip it for a few days with no certain direction in mind until they see a beautiful girl on the side of the highway and they pick up the third and final lost soul and thus ensue on this road trip together across this new bleak and barren wasteland where at night the stars don’t even shine. I enjoy the lighting of this film everything just has a depressing grayish, blue overtone and the scenery throughout most of the road trip on both sides of the highway the desert is littered with trash and debris. It gives the movie a post apocalyptic feel as if this place was the aftermath of some horrible nuclear explosion from a Wes Craven film. I also enjoy the attention to detail it is extremely thorough and greatly appreciated. Tom Waits character is hilarious and omniscient; to no surprise he does an amazing job. The other characters all bring their own personality and twist to the film and this movie just contains a lot of outlandish ideas and explores a lot of untouched areas in film and even in life. This movies complete suspension of reality will suck you in until you feel right at home in this new world with its depressive blue lining and dark humor, it is a truly original film that is captivating and entertaining the entire way through. I don’t want to delve too much into the plot and ruin the story of the trio’s adventure but I highly recommend this film to anyone seeking to see something new and full of great details that are tough to pick up on the first and even second time viewing the film.

Project #10 Create your own artwork

Materials: Cardboard, Paint, Markers

The owls has been considered an omnious sign by many because of its human like shrieks that it makes in the dark of night.

Project #4 Book Making and extra credit book

Front

Back

Middle

Spine

Extra Credit

 Front

Back

Middle

Spine

Project #2: In class drawing

 Jasper Johns Right Hand

 Jasper Johns Left Hand

 Brancussi Free Hand Drawing

 Brancussi Free Hand Drawing

 Rembrandt Blind Contour Right Hand

Rembrandt Blind Contour Left Hand

William Kentridge Film review Project #8

William Kentridge seems to be a very unlikely candidate for the world of art being the son of two lawyers but he has been able to develop a process which allows the unconscious mind of him and his collaborators to yell out amongst the other layers of his complex artwork. I see a lot of myself In William and I enjoy his thoughts on how to view artwork and how to view life itself. He sees life as it truly is continual processes that may not seem to have any meaning until connections are drawn between them and he also states many times throughout the documentary how these processes don’t seem to make sense until after the fact. This is why he always leaves room in all of his artwork for this unconscious, outside hand to run its course. He understands that in art and in life to much uniformity can subtract from the actual realism of a subject even though he is a very process oriented artist. He somehow finds a way to get lost in the process instead of allowing the web of procedures to overtake him and drown out his subconscious thought. This could have something to do with the way he was raised or just the wiring of his brain but I found it fascinating that his mind works in this manner because I too find that I do my best work while multi tasking and distracting the process driven part of my brain so that my creative subconscious may run rampant.

William lays out the duality of life better than most great theologians and understands that both good and bad are prevalent aspects that are interwoven throughout every person’s life. He bears witness to  this duality with in the process of his art making which he states is a way of obtaining knowledge but not in a conventional or rational manner such as that of law. The free state in which his art exists is the thin line that separates his work from that of pure analysis and allows it to enter the realm of art. This line acts as a membrane in which only art may pass through while trapping all other substances political points of view, emotions, violence, opinions, may all be part of his work and his process but something more is derived from the original materials than just their immediate meanings. He does not break onto the scene as if he knows everything but he uses what he knows and the process of creating the art to teach him new methods and this actually in turn has away of steering the art in the direction in which its heading towards its logical destination.

Jean-Michel Basquiat Film Review Project #5

Jean-Michel Basquiat was raised in a time and place where many new art forms were being created, perfected, and were honestly becoming a lifestyle for the first time in America. Art forms such as hip-hop, graffiti, and break dancing which evolved around housing projects in the various boroughs of New York City as an outlet for expression mainly by the minorities inhabiting this area. Basquiat’s art began as graffiti and then he quickly moved onto other mediums first music and then painting but he always painted on random objects that he would pull off of the streets such as doors and windows and any other discarded items with relatively blank surfaces. In this sense the streets of New York always constantly remained an underlying theme throughout most of his artwork. His work gained great recognition during his short career but was never completely accepted or taken seriously by the upper echelon of the art community. After his death he still remains an extremely popular artist to many even though there are still mixed feelings about the complexity and credibility of his work by the art community, whatever that is.

Basquiat’s work is visually inviting to all audiences of any age but it is not until one looks deeper into his paintings that they are turned off by encrypted messages of a time in history or a political charged message that they may not agree with. I believe that there is much controversy surrounding these paintings because the truth that he conveyed in his work was to raw, ugly or beautiful as it may be, for many. That along with his race, his use of such raw material, and his use of bold and crude imagery made him any easy candidate for having his notoriety as an artist defiled by many upstanding art critiques world-wide. But for others who have not had large sticks up their ass most of their lives and believe that art has and always will be open to all to create and view, he remains a highly revered artist appreciated for the intensity of the emotions he portrays with his use of color and the complexity of the messages that his rudimentary forms are capable of revealing. The confidence that Jean-Michel had in himself as an artist and as an active catalyst for change in his community was truly inspiring to me. It was as if he considered his existence alone as living art in which he only needed a medium to communicate, conventional schooling was not necessary for his training, just the belief that life was sacred and that all are capable of using the means around them to create art of the highest quality as long as they are always true to themselves and uphold that integrity for as long as they exist. He started a band with a close friend and neither him nor his friend were musicians by any standards but they were confident in their endeavors and they gained recognition maybe not on a macro scale but at least within the confines of New York City, based solely off of their confidence as artists with a message to portray. Basquiat’s work is an invitation for to join in the most beautiful of all human experiences, creation, and is also a guide and foundation for others to create uninhibited work coming from within the soul and straight out of the hand onto a medium of their choosing.

Chuck Close Film review Project # 3

Chuck Close from a distance looks like a weary old man but in actuality he still has the vitality of a young child and the wisdom of many generations already past. I see him as the long lost grandfather I never had, full of absolute joy about life in general and finding happiness in the simply beauty of the people around him. It is no wonder the subjects of his lifework are his friends, family and even his own face. Close reinvented the self-portrait in order to purge the viewer of any other earlier reference to any artist while they view his work. He worked on a colossal scale and his subjects were simply people’s faces so to many his work almost seems big and stupid. But it is the manner in which he paints it and the accuracy of the portrayal that amazes many viewers. Chuck starts all of his paintings with a large grid and paints in each individual square on the grid with various colors and shapes that look rudimentary and symbolic up close but when viewed from affair their create these huge, imperfection revealing portraits that are spot on every time. Almost every person he has ever painted immediately goes and changes their physical appearance after they view his rendition of them on canvas. Because it is so accurate like a mug shot almost showing both the beauty alongside with the ugly as it is and should be. He believes that there is a lot to learn about the personality and demeanor of person by studying the contours and wrinkles of their face especially when viewed and recorded over long periods of time.

Chuck Close views art as a form of communication and believes that he would not create art if there was no audience to view it and reciprocate their thoughts back to him. He also thinks his work is very narcissistic, because one of his greatest inspirations has been his own image and its progression over the years as he has had new experiences and faced different trials and tribulations. He has taught me to view people’s faces from a different perspective almost as a map of time or a recording of history based on each individuals facial structure. His work both before and after the loss of movement in his most of his body below his neck is similar in subject but differs in the outlook of the artist on life in general. Naturally his outlook was celebratory and thankful to be able to once again resume his life’s work even though after he had to paint with both hands and make his strokes with his full arm instead of just wrist and finger action. This outlook also affected the colors the he chose to paint with and many of his later works have been created with more bright colors as opposed to the gritty realism he portrayed in his early work with his use of more dull colors. “A painting can bring tears to your eyes but in its most basic form it is just colored dirt on a flat surface.” Chuck Close. Close sees painting as a transcendental experience in which an artist transforms this flat surface smeared with colored dirt into a window in which the possibilities are endless. One can create space where there’s is no space, intensely communicate emotions through the use of color, and literally transform this flat surface into something magical that takes the viewer’s mind into a new unexplored realm never before visited.