Barnes Museum

While visiting the Barnes, I was suprised by what I saw when entering the museum. The outside had a modern look to it, with the stillness of the reflecting pond while symmetrical pine trees lined up before it. On the other hand the rooms were filled with paintings, textiles, sculptures, etc. and had a more historic feeling. This was probably because the paintings ranged from late 18th century to early 19th century, making everything in the room seem old and ancient. I noticed that Renoir appeared numerous times which made my love for his work grow. I didn’t mind seeing ten Renoir paintings in a row, in fact, it made me appreciate his work even more. The style of his brushstrokes creating fuzzy outlines is what got me. While looking closely at his paintings, the lines were smoothed and blurred around the edges, giving it a soft edge. The softness of his edges are what really attracted me; there were rarely any harsh lines. On the other hand, my least favorite artist in the museum was Matisse. I wasn’t impressed with his work because of the quick brush strokes and I didn’t prefer the color choices he used. It was nice seeing the diversity of the art work, going from painting to sculpture to weavings.

Chuck Close Portrait Work

While babysitting this evening, I stumbled upon a book containing the paintings of Chuck Close from 1968-2006. Close is an artist I remember learning about in art history class, but never really felt a strong connection to. However, upon picking up this book, reading a bio, Q&A with the artist, and seeing many of his works, I fell in love with his portraits. His style is vastly complex in each of the different phases of his work, but somehow you can tell a painting belongs to him when looking at it instantly. As a lover of photography and paintings alike, I feel extremely drawn to his portrait work with photorealism.
Prior to this year, I thought photorealistic paintings were simply synonymous with photos. I appreciated the hours of work that must go into each painting to make it represent real life, but nothing stood out to me about the works. What made them so special besides the fact that many hours of tedious work went into them?  What's even the point of taking all that time, since they look so similar to real life? Upon looking at Close's work, though, my mind changed quickly. Close's photorealistic portrait series, done in primarily black and white acrylic on canvas, are stunning. What sets them apart form a world of other real-life look-alike paintings is the true rawness of Close's models. Whether or not he exaggerates their features or accessories is beyond me, but the gritty candidness captured in each character is what stands out to me. Slightly ruffled clothes, unkempt eyebrows, cigarettes hanging out the side of lips, and "Who, me?" expressions make these paintings captivating and fascinating. Close also focuses sharply on some sections of the figures, and gets so detailed in paintings like "Richard" where we can see detailed pores and every stubble of five-oclock shadow on the man's face. Only a few inches over, though, on the wrinkled leather fabric of the man's jacket, Close uses a blurred focus look, causing the viewer's eye to dance across the canvas through the fading in and out of clarity and fogginess. These paintings are not necessarily real in a sense of looking exactly like life. Their realness lies in the candid nature and natural looks of each subject. In portraits like "John" and "Leslie," the subjects stare so deeply into the viewer's side of the canvas that it's almost uncomfortable to look for a long time- it feels as if they are opening their soul for you to see, but also reciprocating an intense stare into the viewer's soul.    -Michelle

The Barnes

My most recent encounter with fine arts was not what I expected. My family and I took a trip downtown to the Barnes foundation and I found it to be somewhat disappointing. In my imagination, I pictured the inside of the Barnes to be wild and crazy with paintings practically on top of each other, with a rustic look to the rooms as if they were old and falling apart. At least, I expected the rooms to have a bit more character and look less like a museum. I had heard that the Barnes was originally located in Dr. Barnes’ house and moved to Philadelphia. I could not imagine what I saw to be an actual comfortable home with all the distracting exit signs and labels. It seemed a little too fake to me. I guess this is how his house was before but it just seemed a bit boring to me. All the impressionists’ paintings didn’t really excite me either. But I guess I am not to judge this, because this is what the museum was all about. But a few pieces really caught my eye and stuck with me.   I was introduced to Chaim Soutine. His work had a spooky, twisted look to it making his figures look like they came out of a horror film. The way he distorted his portraits almost mocked the realistic paintings surrounding his. It made me realize that you don’t need to paint a portrait realistically to excite the audience. The rough paint strokes he used, added an awesome texture and aided the distortion of the figures in his pictures. His rough texture contrasted the smooth Renoirs hanging nearby. I would be a little more interested in the Barnes if more Soutine works were shown.        

-Maggie

Organized Artists in Philadelphia

Philadelphia has groups of fine artists who manage "cooperative" galleries.  The artists usually share in the duties including promotion and advertising, serving as host during gallery operating hours, hanging shows, sales, and general maintenance.  In return they get exhibition space for their work.  In an effort to draw attention to these artists and galleries the groups have consolidated their efforts through a collective called the CITYWIDE project.  Working in cooperation, selected galleries exchange work with each other providing exposure to a broader audience.  See www.citywidephilly.com for more updates and information.

Some Descriptive Art Words

Here are some words you chose from your critical essay readings.  Perhaps a word or two may help you describe your chosen works.

Materials were used in the following ways:

revered gestures and impastos, Aurally capturing intonation.  Jabbed, plastered, torn, ripped, impasto, Dominant, emphasized, Unified, Foreground, horizon, point of view, contrasting, strong contours, Raging colors, zigzag marks, punctuated marks, activated textures, pure, sensuous, elegant,  aggressive, gestural, luminosity, dynamism, energy, leathery, festively scribbled, earthy colors, bold brush strokes, shadowed, foggy, spontaneous, lush, naturalistic, magical, intensities, pulsing, delicate, edible, painterly, balmy, effluent, , brilliant, tangles of color, swoop, explode, stucco-like, painterly, flecked with chipped paint, graceful line, flat color,

Qualities of a work:

cluttered, emotionally isolated, emotionally charged, pragmatic, topsy-turvy, exaggerated, spatial rendering, low keyed, allusive/ness, stair-like, ladder-like, melodramatic, sleek, apocalyptic, infinite, languid, furious energy, radical, daring, geometric abstraction, Dynamic, background, depth, kitsch, intimate,

Sequential art (comics), time based art (film/video/other), performance art, audio sculpture,

Bright, contrast, detail, emblematic way of seeing art, dynamics, mnemonic and associative, tension, spectacle, nonevent, imaginative construction, incompletion, looped infinity, visually austere, conceptually dense, unconscious allusion, futile composition, acerbic, twisted, self-emasculating, widely exaggerated pastiche, skewing, grotesque, swirling morass, licks, quasi-surrealist, diminutive, 

idiosyncratic, achromatic, neutral retinal reach, dynamic, skittily, deformed, sexual, tragic, bourgeois, war, death, flamboyance, self-conscience, mischievous, Freudian, desires, peace, pain, silly, psychoanalytic, improvisation, sparks of beauty, fragile, royal statuary, social disparities, modest in scale, cartoon-like presence, many elements at play, organic forms, isolated & emphasized, convincing dialogue, rounded, wavy shapes, “contemporary” look, zip & pizzazz, complex figuration, perilous, movement, richly textured, narrative form , representational art, not on the agenda, boundaries of the visible,  immutable. vehicle of power,  all manner,  “decade” pieces. Vividly realistic. Large. Shaking. Aggressive. Fragile. Ominous. Tranquil. Imposing. Peaceful. Transformative. Weightlessness. Edgy, social and political hierarchy, vibrant, bright, 

playful, masculine and feminine, contrast, fantasy, compositional, flat, ridiculous, painstaking skill, jumping off point; unmistakable, disquieting allusive forms, leitmotifs (thematic passage of music),  compelling and awkwardly decorative; cluster of wax-dribbled sheets, steel cornucopia-like structures, meticulously woven, bulging, hollow, mottled patina of rust, golden translucency and gentle kineticism, reflexive sneezing caused by sunlight, floating tracery, tamarind kernel powder paste, cascading circles and ellipses, trailing peacock tails, looping shadows, rippling contours, gracefully carved, smoothly sanded, sprinkled with blue glass beads, striding through mud, infusion, tactile, Zebra Skin, hollow, radar-screen like grid, dark gray, zig-zag, Day-Glo paint, fantasy, complex... Surface, coloration, canvas, stenciled, fragmented, interplay, solidity, calculated, camouflage, material object, internal external edge, extension, echo, visual properties, our gaze aims at, celebrity, nuance, apocalyptic, luminous, innocent, traditional, looking, observing, rendered, iconic sign, not painting nor sculpture, a trace, image, tactile,

Roberto Capucci

Given the number of students interested in making clothes for their fiber projects, the current exhibition at the Philadelphia Museum of Art should be of special interest to you.  Capucci's work is as much sculpture as it is fashion.  Although many of the outfits look stunning on models, the amount of fabric and other materials he used to create the tiers of dynamic folds and billowy layers make the dresses look heavy and impractical for use.   What is most impressive are the varieties of color, pattern, and texture contrasts Capucci employs when creating forms.  The sparks of emphasis are masterfully placed drawing your attention to the form of the dress without losing touch with the figure beneath the gown.  Check out the museum link to the right of your screen.  Hopefully we will have time to see this exhibit when we tour the museum (there is an additional charge for the exhibit so it may be cost prohibitive).

What's behind the "Cool"

Film has become a popular and entertaining form of time based art because they give us a lot to look at on the big screen, it comes with a powerful sound track, and a plot.  Also it’s over pretty quickly.    We get the point.  The producers make sure you have varying levels of visual, aural, and intellectual stimulation regularly; in other words, something to keep you awake.  Other traditional forms such as poetry, literature, music, dance, and theater may require more concentration.  Although each art form can exist independently, they are usually, with the exception of literature, interdisciplinary (combined).  Can you think of a film without words or musical accompaniment?  They do exist, but not usually in the mainstream.   It is the unique exceptions, experiments, or curious combinations of these time-based forms that we start to consider as art.  By that I mean the work has greater meaning beyond the obvious; or a work of art will suggest multiple interpretations, its point being somewhat elusive.  If it’s art it should invite discussion or investigation into its motives or production. 

That is why I frown upon shallow exclamations like, “it’s cool” or “it really pops,” because I believe the artist offers more than a clever one-liner. We need to look a bit deeper into a work if we are going to discuss it as art.  We could come up with thousands of cool examples of film shorts from Youtube® alone. It would be a lot of fun. The technology is just so easily accessible now that, given the right concept; one could create art with their cell phone.  There are a lot of people putting scads of visual information online daily.  Youtube® and the internet in general have made it easy for anyone to show his/her work.  So as budding artists we attempt to discriminate between what is pretty clever and entertaining and what we can discuss as art.  Hopefully, some of you have already experienced work by the performance teams at Philadelphia’s Fringe Festival or other well established performance artists like Laurie Anderson.  Their multidisciplinary productions and experimental methodology make full use of artistic license, and are good examples to discuss.  But, let’s dig a little deeper into the details that define a work as art when we discuss it.

            I’m interested in your response to a practical kind of time based work, animation.  The following work builds a bridge between the studio techniques you’ve learned in school and animation.   […It’s funny.  I am always fascinated when students interested in animation shun the idea of having to develop a 2-D portfolio when applying to an art school.  Perhaps these two artists will enlighten.]

1.      I was watching Robin Hood starring Russell Crowe and Cate Blanchett and although the movie may be worth discussing critically, the end credits are what bowled me over.  The background scene behind the print was a combination of painting and still photographs from the movie produced through analogue animation rather than digital (although, I’ll bet in the end there was some digital monkeying).  Analogue animation is the kind Walt Disney and Looney Tunes used to do, where separate frames are sequenced like a flip book.   Gianluigi Toccafondo, an artist from Prologue Films (a collective of designers), is responsible for the work.  If you look up, “Robin Hood Prologue Films” You’ll see what impressed me.

2.     Also check out Danny Yount’s work.  He is a self-taught graphic artist who transitioned between some pen and ink drawings and still shots when he animated the end credits for Sherlock Holmes.   Among other works, he is also the graphic artist responsible for the credits on Iron Man and Iron Man 2.  Click on “work” at:  http://www.dannyyount.com/