WEEK 9: MODERNISM AND POST-MODERNISM

1. Outline the intentions of each artist.

I will try to speculate as accurately as I can. Chuck Close has been working exclusively with portraiture for 30 years, and given the interesting style of 'Maggie' I would guess that his intention is to experiment with various visual styles in order to explore some kind of transcendental aesthetic where hyper realism and abstract experimentation come together and party. As for Monet, I think his intentions are much easier to decipher, because Monet liked to paint in 'series' during the more established portion of his career. Within these series Monet would paint the same subject many times over, but at different times of the day, because he wanted to explore how different lighting conditions affected the mood and the colour of a scene. 'Water lillies' is probably his most well known series, and a perfect example of his fascination with lighting and colour. And like most impressionists, Monet was more interested in creating depth and atmosphere through the use of colour and tone, rather than creating depth through accurate rendering of volume and perspective, and fine detail.

And also, according to the New York Museum of Modern Arts' online gallery, Monet 's specific intention in terms of 'meaning' for the 'Water Lillies' was, in his own words, to create " the illusion of an endless whole, of water without horizon or bank." 

Perhaps Chuck Close shares Monet's aesthetic intentions of creating realism through colour and impression of detail rather than detail itself, because there are certain visual similarities between their works:

                                                  'Woman With a Parasol'  oil on canvas, by
                                                   Claude Monet

                                                   
                                                    'Clinton'  oil on canvas, by Chuck Close

...Okay so these two pictures don't exactly look identical, but in terms of technique and aesthetic, I think that a sharp lawyer could argue that they're in fact, not that far removed from each other in the realms of the fine arts spectrum. Let's look at their individual techniques for example; Monet does not render his objects accurately, i.e. he doesn't recreate realistic details and he doesnt use outlines and fully realized shapes and volumes. Instead he creates the impression of a fully rendered object or scene by covering the canvas in little individual daubs and dabs of colour, arranging them in such a way as to create light, tone, depth, mood, and even shape. So if one were to stick one's face right up to the canvas, Monet's work would look like a non-sensical mess of dabs and splotches. Yet when viewed in its entirety, 'Woman with a Parasol' becomes a beautifully realized scene, with the colours and the lighting giving it, in a way, a level of realism almost beyond photographic, because the impression becomes so vivid, that we can actually feel like we're there, smelling the air, or feeling the sunlight on our skins etc.
And I think that maybe the same can be said of Chuck Close's work as well. Just like Monet, Chuck Close doesn't bother with the accurate illustration of his subject's facial features. Instead he likes to divide his portrait into a grid-like pattern and render them as such. That is to say that he likes to create a realistic impresson of the face by using methods other than straight forward rendering.

"In the 80's he composed faces with coloured and black and white spots, in the 90's he made them of circles of various colours"   -Taken from the State Hermitage Museum's exhibition archive: Chuck Close: Seven Portraits

And these days Close creates works like 'Clinton' by breaking a photograph of the subject down into grid like sections of colour which look strangely mosaic-like and almost digital in a pixelated sort of way. But just like Monet's work, when viewed as a whole his portraits become almost hyper-realistic in the sense that they somehow manage to convey shape, form and lighting almost more convincingly than an immaculately painted Dutch still-life could. In a way then, both Monet and Close deliberately distort reality in order to present reality more vividly.
So to recap their similarities then: Both artists, although capable, are not very interested in faithfully reproducing the details of their subjects, i.e. realistic illustration in a verbatim sort of way. Both artists break their work down into individual units of colour, and both of them also have a very keen interest in creating the 'impression' of form and lighting, as well as the subliminal mood and tone which results from such an approach. And both their works, as a result of this 'pixilated' method of composition, probably have an 'optimal distance' from which to view their work in order to get the full effect.
In fact Close actually places markers in his exhibits to indicate the best viewing distance to the gallery guests viewing his works.

But of course there are also some arbitrary differences in their works. Close for example, likes to paint his portraits on gigantic canvases,often around 4 meters high, probably in part due to the impact generated by such a bombastic canvas, and partly due to the unique style of his 'pixels', which would be very tedious to recreate on an average size canvas. Monet on the other hand, tends to prefer a more reasonable sized canvas, even though he did also create the occasional 4 meter behemoth, one his 'Water Lillies' being one of those.

I guess the main difference betwen the two artists though, is that despite their very stylistic techniques, they tend to deal in very different subject matter. Close deals solely in portraiture. His entire career is comprised of applying his unique aesthetic approach to the exploration of faces - the impact and emotion generated by the presence of his extra large portraits, and whatever mood or feeling a viewer may experience upon seeing his work is a subject which Close is obviously very passionate about.
"I don't think the work was ever as coldly calculated or mechanical as people thought."  -Chuck Close, in 'Chuck Close', an independent video documentary about the artists life and work.

Monet's subject matter on the other hand, is much more varied. Monet seems more interested in the properties of light, colour, and atmosphere as a whole, and the actual subject matter seems somewhat secondary to that - i.e. Monet seems to choose his landscapes because they lend themselves well to his impressionistic explorations of light and colour, and not because just because 'they look picturesque', and would make for a pleasing composition. The same probably goes for whatever he chose to paint on any given day, because the first thing that strikes me when I look at a Monet painting is the way his use of colour and lighting always creates a very vivid atmosphere, one that, like I said before, allows the viewer to kind of experience the actual smell and warmth of the scene. And there is a lot of warmth in Monet's paintings, which is unfortunately very rare in most modern art these days.

Another key difference between their respective works is probably tightness. Despite Close's claims to the contrary, his portraits are clearly very tightly mapped out and calsulated, and the coulour pixels are very carefully arranged to create the desired effect, which is confirmed by his friends and colleagues who all attest to the fact that he puts 'literally hundreds of hours' into his works. Monet's work by comparison, is not so tight, given that extreme tightness is probably not really required to create the effect of sunlight and warmth, whereas it is definetly required to create an accurate portrait of someone using a pattern of 'paint-pixels'.

Personally I really like the work of both these artists. They're both obviously super awesome at what they do, but I would have to say that Monet is probably my favourite, because his landscapes (not to sound like Pearl Harbour-Josh Hartnett) make me feel like the sunlight in his paintings is actually warming my skin, evoking fond memories of warm afternoons spent during my childhood summers in Wyoming, when my best friend Pete and I used to run down to the creek behind old man Jackson's ranch, and we would spend all day looking for the lost pirate gold which we knew was there, even though the O'Hara twins would laugh at us, and tell us that it wasn't. But we knew that they was lyin' 'cause we still had the old treasure map that Pete's dad had drawn for us on my birthday, and Pete's dad used to be a captain on his very own moonshine barge, so he ought to know where there was treausre and where it wasn't. So we dug along that ole creek every day, and we always finished before old man Jackson got back from his fields, 'cause he would get mighty upset if he saw us diggin' around on his property. Sometimes the O'Hara twins would try and con us into stayin' longer, tellin' us that ole Jackson had done broke his leg in the fields, and he that he wouldn't make it back before sundown, but we always knew them girls were lyin'. I sometimes wondered why they did that, tryin' to keep us there longer for no reason other than gettin' us in trouble, and why they would giggle in that awfully peculiar way of theirs, all playful-like.
So one day Pete and I decided to play a little trick on them girls. We hitched a ride into town on the back of Farmer Joe's old pick-up,

WEEK 7: INDUSTRIALISATION AND CAO FEI'S RMB CITY

1. What and when was the Industrial Revolution?


The industrial revolution was an era in which fundamental innovations and technological advancements brought about drastic changes in society, during the late 1700s and most of the 1800s. Social and financial infrastructures were 'revolutionized' because everything was done differently from the way it was being done before because new technologies were now available. As far as I could gather, most of these changes were brought on by agricultural advancements which enabled a greater amount of produce and lifestock to be maintained, enabling a larger workforce to be fed, and thus creating a more productive society, which in turn, led to bigger cities and more advancements in all areas of the human spectrum-technology, society, politics, arts etc. The industrial revolution started in england and soon spread across the globe from there.


UMBERTO BOCCIONI'S 'The City Rises'

The subject matter of this painting is pretty busy, there's a lot of stuff in there. Overall I guess its sort of expressing the tumultous and vibrant nature of man made technology and the animal beast coming together to create dynamic figures on canvas, amongst other things. The people and the beast-like animals (looks like horses i think) are painted in a very dynamic manner, very passionate and colourful and full of movement, all over the page. But the buildings and man made structures are arranged slightly more orderly, and structurely, with proper perspective and stuff, but despite their orderly man made arrangement, they don't seem to detract from the dynamic liveliness of the scene, so I guess Boccioni is showing that the two come together to create something magnificent.

As for the celebration of movement and machines, yeah that's definetly in there. I think the festive colours alone would suggest that. But also the way the figures are just writhing with exuberant motion, and the way the man made structures, or 'the machine' so to speak, is kind of towering over these figures in a fatherly sort of way as if to say "I am a big industrial city full of machines and people made me and i am fond of people and animals and now they can all run around and play within my walls, so we all get along really well around here."

GIACOMO BALA'S 'Dynamism of Dog on a Leash'

The subject matter of this painting seems to a little black poodle on a leash, being held by a short cartoony fat guy. But the legs of both the dog and the owner are a blur because they seem to be moving back and forth really fast, presumably running or walking. So I guess it's a study in movement,or the expressing thereof, which is probably something quite modern for its time because they didn't really have cartoon strips back in 1912, where that sort of thing was prevalent.

I don't really see much of a celebration going on here, maybe it's more of a playful study or experimentaion on the whole movement and machinery thing. What's interesting about this is that this is ,in a way, the forerunner to the'Tom and Jerry' cartoon strips of today. These paintings of literally trying to convey motion through multiplying limbs and blurring, were said to be inspired by the advent of chronophotography during the very early 20th century. So it's kind of a pioneer painting in the sense that artist up to that point hadn't really attempted to capture actual motion on canvas before, and this painting is an experimentation in how to achieve that.


CAO FEI'S 'RMB City'

RMB city is virtual city built by 'China Tracy' in the virtual reality role-playing game 'Second Life'. It consists of various modern/futuristic looking abstract structures to create a weirdly disconcerting dystopian kind of enviroment, interlaced with playful colourful shapes, as well as eerie references to China's traditional history and culture, such as a half submerged stature of Mao, and a weird floating communist flag above the city. There are also a bunch of chinese icons like the Beijing Olympic stadium and a Panda, all coming together in a chaotic mish mash of sorts. The work is generally believed to be a musing on China's recent urban and cultural explosion, maybe western culture replacing communism in an overly excited ejaculation of pent-up wild colours and shapes.

A Utopia is an imaginary society that has perfect socio-political structure, and is basically a vision of an idealized, perfect place to live. A Dystopia is that imaginary society gone bad, sometime in the future. And it has usually gone bad because of the efforts made to create a Utopia.
RMB City is a good example of this because in a way it looks like it could be either of those, or both at the same time. It looks like it could be some kind of city in the future that was created with the idea of trying to create the perfect socio-political structure by making everything super eclectic and free spirited and letting a team of free love-all star hippies design all the buildings and art galleries. And that society has now become a Dystopia because it is simply too chaotic, and good old fashioned ideas like Hollywood action movies are no longer being made because A: there is no longer a financial infrastructure there to make them with, and B: because the studios have now been overrun by China Tracy and her band of abstract installationists and 7-minute short film makers. Now I'm not having a go at abstract installation art or short films here, not at all, I think it's great that they're there for people to (ahem) enjoy. I'm just saying that RMB City doesn't look like a place that I would be comfortable living in- too much of one thing and not enough balance. Hence, a Dystopia that started out as a Utopia because everyone was happy and free and running around expressing themselves. But no one kept the factories and gas stations running, so now there's no food and no more cinemas in RMB city.


5. Although the Modernist paintings and the contemporary digital work have emerged from
different contexts, there are also many similarities. Comment on the similarities that you can see in the work.

Even though the two paintings and RMB city are completely different mediums and frankly, look nothing alike whatsoever, I guess there are nonetheless, a few key similarities. For one thing, they're both fairly innovative, and actually quite grounbreaking in a way, because both paintings as well as MB City are pushing the envelope of their respective mediums , as well as their respective times. 'The City Rises' for example, is quite groundbreaking in the sense that it took Impressionism, which was probably the most modern style of painting at the time, and went one better by combining the stylization of Impressionist rendering and suggestion with an all new stylization of the actual composition and subject matter. I don't know if that makes any sense-what I'm trying to say is that impressionists stylized rendering by not colouring and shading everything out in painstaking detail, but instead came up with a new style that suggested a lot, and conveyed a lot more with fewer brush strokes. And what Boccioni, as well as his contemporary modernists did, was to invent a new style in terms of what they actually painted, and how they arranged on the canvas, again, conveying a lot more with fewer objects.
And Balla and his 'Poodle on leash' painting is also groundbreaking because he stylized movement. That is to say that it was a revolutionary way of conveying movement, because cartoons and animation and such didn't exist in his day, and he must have looked at motion blur or something in a photograph and came up with a way to capture the essence of movement on canvas.
And RMB City is groundbreaking because it is a whole new medium of art- sculpting something interactive in a virtual reality three dimensional space.
 And what ties all this together is that all three instances of breaking new ground here were brought on by the advancement of technology which we can now neatly tie back to the industrial revolution.
All three also share a distinct sense of curiosity that is almost visible in those works. A palpable sense of experimentation.