Lorenzo Quinn

Support, 2017

On the 13^th of May, Lorenzo Quinn launched his new monumental sculpture at the Ca’ Sagredo Hotel, during the Venice Bienalle, 2017.

‘Support’ has been designed to address the environmental and global climate issues facing today’s society. Quinn uses the two gigantic hands as a force of nature that braces the historic building, both reinforcing it in the face of decay while at the same time suggesting a force of nature equally capable of destroying it.

“I wanted to sculpt what is considered the hardest and most technically challenging part of the human body. The hand holds so much power – the power to love, to hate, to create, to destroy,” -Lorenzo Quinn.

This reflects the fragility of our built and natural environment and its vulnerability to the forces of nature and man. Quinn takes a liberal stance on climate change and addresses the ability for humans to make a change to impact the world around them – environmentally, economically and socially. Overall, ‘Support’ forces the viewer to come face to face with reality and the social impact that climate change has had on our planet. 

‘Venice is a floating art city that has inspired cultures for centuries, but to continue to do so it needs the support of our generation and future ones, because it is threatened by climate change and time decay,’ Lorenzo Quinn.

Bibliography:

Halcyon Gallery [online]

London

Available from: https://www.halcyongallery.com/exhibitions/lorenzo-quinn-at-the-venice-biennale [Accessed 3rd December 2017]

For my Contemporary Project, I printed out a picture of Leonardo da Vinci’s painting ‘Mona Lisa’. However, the printer had ran out of toner and the image’s colours were completely altered. The painting’s original and naturalistic colours were replaced by bright fuchsia, coral, violet and royal blue. There was no longer proof of the technique da Vinci used-(‘sfumato’) in this painting, since the smooth transitions of tones were replaced with harsh lines. I decided that I would use that print for this task and proceed to strip the image from what made it so monumental within the art world. Other than the ‘sfumato’ technique, Mona Lisa’s gaze and smile played a role in making it such a popular painting. Mona Lisa’s eyes were painted in a specific way, making them follow you when you move around, which gave the painting mystery. Mystery was also created by her ‘smile’. When looking away from her mouth, it falls under the viewer’s peripheral vision, making it unclear. This, along with a little shading at the cheek bones make her mouth look like a smile. But once the viewer focuses on her mouth, the smile slowly disappears.

I decided to cover her face, and therefore cover her mysterious gaze and smile. I painted over her face using a palette knife, which added texture to the painting, and the vibrancy of the colours transformed the image even further. Having now removed everything that made the original image so impressive, I started to take it in as a work of art on its own. Even though the mystery of the gaze and smile was removed, the image now consisted of anonymity, since her face was covered. The texture and colours that were added stripped the image of its original meaning and gave it a whole new meaning, therefore eroding the conventional definition of what artwork can be.

In both texts, the artists aspire to change the way art is seen but also the way it is created. They discuss ideas that shocked the society of that time, but also revolutionized the art world.

The text ‘Leo Steinberg (b.1920) from Other Criteria’ describes the ‘Flatbed Picture Plane’ in art. He discusses how art has evolved from corresponding to the standing human posture and from being a flat and horizontal image, to being more about the process of the art itself. He gives examples of artists, such as Rothko, Still, Newman, de Kooning and Jackson Pollock, all of which would follow the flatbed picture plane rule. Pollock, an abstract expressionist, would start out with his work on the floor but then he would hang it on the wall, allowing the paint to drip down. A change happened in the in the 1950’s, which was seen through Robert Rauschenberg’s and Dubuffet’s work. Their work didn’t correspond to the human posture, even though it could still be hung on the wall and it focused more on the process of making the art than the result.

In comparison, the text ‘Richard Serra (b.1939) from The Yale Lecture’ explains the art of sculpture and three dimensional work.  Serra focuses on the process of making art, much like Steinberg. However, unlike Steinberg, Serra emphasises the importance of site-specific work, and escapes the traditional studio. He states that one cannot produce work within a context and then place it in another. The scale, size and location of site-specific works are very important and are determined by the topography of the site, the surrounding architecture, and generally the environmental components of the given context. One must also take into consideration the social and political characteristics of the site, allowing the artist to focus on the relationship between the sculpture and the context.

Throughout this process I would not say that I have really learned anything from the research and communications module besides the appropriation task, this I learned about appropriation and some of the laws behind it, this was valuable information that could become helpful in future endeavours. I also found it useful being informed about artists I had not heard of before and I liked analysing photos such as in Task 3 were I analysed a photo by ‘Nikki S. Lee, Part (14), 2002 [photograph]’ and in Task 9 I spoke about Duncan Grants photo ‘Bathing, 1911’. However this is something I have already done previously before doing a degree, so therefore nothing I don’t already know how to do and is something I simply just enjoy doing, which is why I liked these tasks. I found the studio work and lectures far more beneficial to my practice, such as learning more about the art movements, which made me have a better understanding of the concepts behind an artist and what influenced them and their work.

So overall the blog for me was not that useful to my practice however it did improve my knowledge of artists. Although the lectures, my own research and crits was more than sufficient for me to find artists that related to my artwork and would benefit my practice.

I have always been intrigued by the presentation of two or more perspectives/elements in an artwork. M. C. Escher’s ‘Reflections’ series has been an inspiration to me for a long time, as he manages to capture multiple perspectives within one image, by using reflective surfaces such as puddles, reflecting spheres, dewdrops, ponds, the pupil of an eye, etc. Yayoi Kusama also creates multiple perspectives in her exhibit ‘Infinity Mirrored Room’, where one hundred multi-coloured LED lights pulsate at various speeds and patterns inside an entirely reflective room, creating an illusion of infinite space. Other than the reflections of the lights, you can also see endless reflections of yourself, which creates a sense of freedom and makes you forget all limits.

I would like to create surrealist artwork using mirrors or other reflective surfaces to present multiple perspectives- such as the earth and the sky, for example- in one image. The artwork could range from paintings to photographs to installations and I could work with my surroundings or even try to create an other-worldly experience, just like Kusama did. It would also be interesting to manipulate the reflected image through ripples in water or broken mirrors, in order to give a distorted and transformed depiction of real life.

Liberation, force, honesty, authentic, creative, loud, dynamic, society, personal, vivid.

I decided to use a piece I recently painted named “Dirty Baby” to best represent my practice. The image is conveying how society can change the meaning of a word to mean something completely opposite, for example in this piece baby can be defined as a human being, new-born, innocent and pure. Then society has manipulated the word to mean a more sexual connotation that one may call a partner; a dirtier version. I also used the colours blue and pink to represent the stereotypes associated with the genders when a child is born; pink for female and blue for male. I then merged these colours together which created a purple that expressed a neutral version of these gender stereotypes. So my piece was challenging gender roles in our society, which covers some of my choice of words quite accurately.

This image was an accurate representation of my project so far as a lot of my work contains the subjects of breaking stereotypes and gender roles, so this images concept is one way I have been exploring these subjects, while also still strongly highlighting what my artwork is about currently.

Writing this blog has furthered my interest in Fine Art as a whole and has allowed me to deepen my knowledge in subjects within the Fine Art practice; for example, looking into the history of art and appropriating images.

The task I enjoyed the most was ‘appropriate an image’ as I realised how quickly the meaning behind a piece of work can change and be put into a different context; it also allowed me to bring modern work into a contemporary setting through the use of subject matter that is prevalent in today’s society. I also realise how easy it is to plagiarise someone’s work as, it took me 10 minutes to complete the task.

The task I struggled the most with though was comparing the two texts because, honestly, they were very long, tricky texts to wrap your head around; but, it did teach me to separate relevant information from the rest of text.

Overall, I’ve found this blog helpful when it comes to consolidating my knowledge of the task in hand as they are only brief and force me to only include relevant information.

The piece I have chosen is ‘Whale’(2009)  from Running the Numbers II: Portraits of global mass culture (2009-present) by Chris Jordan and the theory that I will be applying to the piece is James Lovelock’s Gaia Hypothesis.

The piece shows 50,000 plastic bags which is equivalent to the amount of plastic floating in the world’s oceans (1). The way in which this piece relates to Gaia Hypothesis is the idea that we need to look after the earth and in return, the earth will look after us; “If we abuse Gaia, we risk our own survival” as “there is only one pollution…people” – Lovelock (2). Animals aren’t the ones producing plastic bags and discarding them in their own habitats. Everything on this earth needs to work together in order for it to function and Lovelock demonstrates this with his hypothetical scenario ‘Daisy World’ whereby black and white daisies work off each other to grow and keep the planet in a constant equilibrium (2).

Sources:

1. http://www.chrisjordan.com/gallery/rtn2/#whale Chris Jordan – Photographic Arts
2. ‘Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth’ – James Lovelock

Barbara Kruger, ‘I Shop Therefore I Am’, 1987

A lot of Barbara Kruger’s work deals with post-modern feminism and challenging the current social and political views regarding women and feminism at that time. Kruger appropriates images from magazines and newspapers to use as backgrounds for her graphic, textual pieces. She combines these appropriated images with text, usually a confrontational phrase which challenges the post-modern life.

In particular her piece, ‘I Shop Therefore I Am’, refers to images of women in the media, mainly adverts designed for women by men. It suggests the belief that women only need material objects to be satisfied. The fact that these advertisements are usually created by men, only furthers the belief that the common assumption about women is that they are very materialistic beings that men can control. It is gender stereotyping and the fact Kruger refers to this in her work  is highlighting this wrong and negative ideal surrounding women. It is reinforcing the fact that women are misrepresented in the media and how the ‘male gaze’ is a dominant feature. It is also highlighting the male dominated industries, who are creating these advertisements and the usual techniques of selling their products.

Bibliography

KRUGER, B. 1987. ‘I Shop Therefore I Am’ [Image] – Accessed 23rd November 2017

Available here : http://www.arthistoryarchive.com/arthistory/feminist/Barbara-Kruger.html