2nd Year - 09: Gendering The Image

I am going to discuss whether there is such a difference between the work of male artists and female artists, how they have been treated by society in the past and how they are treated currently, as well as discussing whether or not it is actually important to have differences. 

http://www.moma.org/learn/moma_learning/themes/investigating-identity/constructing-gender


By trying to decipher the gender of an artist purely based on their work we automatically turn to socially constructed gender norms where masculine and feminine aspects are expected to reflect a gender. For instance we would expect male artists to use harsher techniques; Bolder lines, a more powerful colour pallete of deep reds etc. and more aggression, we expect the work to look powerful. 

Female artists on the other hand are expected to use softer approaches with more subtle features and for everything to be pretty. 

Personally I believe this stems from our culture. I think that historically males have always been the dominant protectors, killing animals for food to feed our families, going to war to protect our countries and females have stayed at home and remained safe. 

I also feel that it's wrong to approach art in this way, and that this algorithm of deciphering gender isn't relevant anymore in todays society, especially in the western world. Perhaps in the east this may be different as especially in Japan, where right up until World War 2 it was men that were loyal to their lords and women who were loyal to their men. 

Then during world war two women's roles shifted so that they aided their country by having babies, men's role was to fight for it. 

Today men are still seen to some extent as the dominant gender but society is quickly evening out the field. The truth is there is no way to 100% distinguish genders purely from artwork; there is such a difference in styles that it is impossible and personality can play a big part in styles and processes. Women can be masculine and Men can be feminine.

2nd Year - 12: Dave McKean

Dave McKean

Director of Luna, Dave McKean is also an illustrator, photographer, comic book artist, musician and graphic designer. His work is quite surreal and strange which gives him a unique style and opens him up more to a market by almost becoming a main figure of a certain style. 

He was born in Maidenhead, England in 1963 where he grew up with a love of comics. He planned to take his love into a career and took a trip to new york in 1986 to find work as a comic book illustrator, but failed. Shortly afterwards while back in England he met writer Neil Gaiman and the two began writing "Violent Cases",a short graphic novel which became published in 1987.

Among his work with Gaiman, he also began working for DC comics, on covers for "Hellblazer" initially but then moved on to the more successful and popular "Batman", producing the graphic novel "Arkham Asylum: A Serious House On Serious Earth", written by Grant Morrison.

McKean has also had success with creating Album Art, and has worked with a range of artists including "Alice Cooper", "Buckethead", and "Fear Factory".

In the illustrated book by Richard Dawkins called "The Magic of Reality" McKean's strange creations were used to explain different aspects of every day life.

As well as creating the illustrations for The Magic of Reality, he also illustrated Coraline, again with Neil Gaiman and worked as a concept artist for the Harry Potter franchise, coming up with the designs for The Dementors. 

While at San Diego Comic Con (SDCC) He was asked about his influences, to which he replied "My influences were nearly anybody, really. You can find something in anything if you look. There have been maybe a couple of people whose attitude in their work was really important. There's a New York artist called Jim Dine who I really love; there's an English illustrator called Ralph Steadman who I like. Every line in a Ralph Steadman drawing is describing and expressing the emotion in the character, not just what they look like." 

By looking at Steadman's work we can see a subtle similarity in that he also works with surrealism and the line is quite similar to the comicbook line McKean uses within his Batman comics, but this subtle similarity is better seen in his earlier work with The Wolves In The Walls.

I feel that the way the line is used for the illustrations of TheWolves in The Walls is very similar to an illustrator called Daniel Egneus. The processes are very similar in that a line creating a figure sits over splashes of colour which amplifies the figure and is used to anchor attention.

The Wolves in the Walls, Dave McKean

Red Riding Hood, Daniel Egneus














References:
http://unbored.net/dave-mckean/
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/celebrity/dave_mckean/biography
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dave_McKean

http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=46907

2nd Year - 04: The Beatles Albums

I am going to discuss an album cover of The Beatles and how it played an important role int he visual arts industry tying it in with the social surroundings at the time and how the band had progressed into this phase.

Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band

The album itself was incredibly important to that era,spreading the theme of love and spirituality unlike any other album before it or since. It contributed to the sociecty of the time and the peoples mindsets. For the band themselves this album was important, because it was the point in their careers together where they began to grow apart and began to hate being the beatles. 

For this album the band went undercover. They were no longer The Beatles, and this meant that they were free to experiment. 
     "We'd pretend to be someone else,". "It liberated you – you could do anything when you got to the mic or on your guitar, because it wasn't you."

                                                        - Paul McCartney, The Beatles Anthology

The album was the first produced with an 8 track recording; 2 4-track machines were used together in sync.

The theme for the album cover was "people we like". In short, Peter Blake (the artist behind the design) said that if they were in a park playing a concert then the people in the photo would just be anyone who turned up to the concert, but if they used cardboard cutouts, those people could be whoever they wanted. Along side celebrities and well known people, the Beatles also featured waxworks of themselves all dressed in matching suits; they referred to these as "the old Beatles". 

The Beatles former bandmate, Stuart Sutcliffe was also featured on the album cover, dispite having died in 62. John is thought to be behind choosing Stuart to appear as he always thought of his as his best friend. 

2nd Year - 03: Heath Robinson

I am going to discuss the artist Heath Robinson and how his work was quite ahead of its time, bringing in examples of contemporary illustrations to enforce my argument. 

Chris Riddell and William Heath Robinson

Son of an Anglican Priest, Chris Riddell was born in Cape Town, South Africa, where he lived until he was 1. He then moved to England in 1963 and moved around a lot as his father changed parishes. He attended grammer school before moving on to an art college, and then from 1981 to 1984 he studied illustration at Brighton Polytechnic, where he became a student of Raymond Briggs, the illustrator of the well known book "The Snowman". Chris acknowledges Briggs as a biginfluence in his work and it can be seen when contrasting work from the two. 

The Snowman, Raymond Briggs

Whilst there, Briggs introduced Riddell to his own publisher, and this lead to Riddell being commissioned for The Book Of Giants, for Sainsburys. 

In 88 the editor of The Economist was so impressed by Riddell's work that he hired him to work on illustrating articles for the magazine. He also worked as a political illustrator for the Sunday Correspondent and also a business cartoonist for The Observer. 

As well as Briggs being a large influence to Riddell's work, he also states that William Heath Robinson and John Tenniel are influencial too, and he has had work described as "Heath Robinson with a few drinks in him". 


Riddell

Heath Robinson

We can see a real similarity between the two, perhaps more detail in Riddell's work but the same use of line in used. Line is something quite important with Heath Robinson's popularity in the present day. His designs are very contemporary and this is down to the clean line that he uses. 

His work shows a resemblance in two quite different areas, one of these being in contemporary furniture. Here we can see a design that was created in 1976 and a chair made in recent years.

Another genre we see his works similarities in is the growing popularity of Steampunk. The line he uses as well as the technical side to his designs are something replicated within the designs of steampunk machines. 

Essay: Japonism

Hokusai - Great wave off Kanagawa

Recreations
https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVH07f5KOorPNw-d6LSwsldHHUpQqCDnnYRRzEuOTmpys-BqD4a6HJo3yuD0q0NEnsCE5o3mLrEmyaxTWscsbx9AoDTpcm0LnDmqTOo9WndWE4qnprdKRuprEwYMMk3EYu-2KVLMLhfPE/s1600/Great+Wave+2011_OilStick_1.JPG

 http://fc01.deviantart.net/fs71/i/2012/088/d/4/great_wave_on_the_great_sea_by_sirnosh-d4ucb0g.jpg

 https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBPXj5WmdKuQRK8uPNCTRjsvVH0_4Skx6onuQGQRHJnt67F-gReLVDjjNONEAkzeBl3yhQXd2fANrzu3uX0lO0uZ6dcXw37eQA5vRNRh4kO7j6tk23cOys5MU81j1p0ahXmy3SP2J26RQ/s1600/The+great+wave-+Amadeus+series+RTP_0.jpg

Van Gogh and Hiroshige

 http://www.awesome-art.biz/Awesome/images/medium-vg2/Japonese%20tree%20(after%20Hiroshige%20by%20Van%20Gogh.jpg

http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/hiroshige/plum.jpg

A sea of Japanese art washed over Europe towards the second half of the 19^th century after japan reopened its borders for trading after 200 years of being shut off from Europe. Around the late 1630s religion was becoming more and more common in Spain and Portugal, so as a way to isolate itself from religious and colonial influences which were thought to pose a threat to the Shogunate’s stability, Japan closed itself off to trade with outside countries. Between 1639 and 1853 Japan only traded with China and Korea, which had severely limited trading, and with the Dutch, who were the only part of Europe they did trade with.

During this time because Japan had very little interaction with foreign countries, it strengthened culture and also brought great prosperity both socially and economically. People were more inclined to pursue activities they found pleasurable, such as painting. This build-up of new artists in a period of unprecedented peace and stability helped to create their own unique style free from outside influences.

After over 200 years of this self-imposed exclusion and many attempts by outside forces trying to bridge a trading path between Japanese shores and the west, U.S. Navy’s Commodore Matthew Perry in 1853 took four warships known as The Black Ships (Named Mississippi, Plymouth, Saratoga and Susquehanna) to the Bay of Edo in Tokyo to demand Japan re-establishes western trade connections. This lead to the first treaty the year after with the west, “The Treaty of Peace and Amity” with the U.S. which then paved the way for others to follow, starting with “The Anglo-Japanese Friendship Treaty” with the United Kingdom at the end of the year, and many other western countries in the five consecutive years.

When trading finally resumed in 1853 a flood of Japanese art travelled to Europe, with Paris being the main hotspot for art at the time. Similar to 1922 when King Tutankhamen’s tomb was discovered, there was a massive surge in people wanting to collect art. Instead of Egyptian art though, wood block prints, fans and anything related to Japanese culture became people’s obsession.

This was amplified during and after an exhibition in France in 1862, where Japanese stalls introduced prints and objects to the general public. It was all new and exciting to Europeans, and generated popularity quickly.

Visual Cultures: 11: Late 20th Century: Illustrators in relation to graphic novels

By comparing old comic book styles to new we can see how the art work has evolved. These covers of marvel comic books from the 50s show simplistic colour pallets as the technology at that time consisted mostly of screen printing. 

In more recent comics and advances in printing technology as well as digital approaches to illustrating, comic books have changed their styles to more realistic images rather than flat colours as we can see in the new Iron Man comic books.

A company based in London, Nobrow Press work in a unique way similar to the traditional methods. Artists submit different "Layers" of work in different colours to create a CMYK composition when printed repeatedly onto the same bit of paper. These colours are Cyan Magenta Yellow and Key (Black). Although black isn't a colour, the shade is created by mixing a variation of all colours. 

Whilst an artist was trying to create full black by having a dark colour, they realised it turned out grey so this created a bigger variety of tones and colours that can be created. 

Although 4 colours sounds very minimal, they can actually create a full spectrum of colours by mixing each carefully. 

Visual Culture: 10: 1950s and 60s: Pop Art

Pop Art

Means "Popular Art"

Pop art arose because The Independant Group wanted a name for all things relating to popular culture at that time. 

It was a small group, consisting several artists but also critics and architects

The first person to use the term in print was Lawrence Alloway in 1958

Richard Hamilton said that pop art was designed for a large audience, a short term solution that was easily forgotten. 

Because it was designed for a large amount of people, it was mass produced and therefore had to be low cost.

Litter (1955 sheffield, graves A.G.) was an example of Peter Blake's love for folk art and pop culture. Because this was so early on in his student life, it is said he was the first British pop artist.

Eduardo Paolozzi was a surrealist that turned into a pop artist around 1962 with sculptures and then screen prints in 1965 

https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/paolozzi-no-title-trial-proof-for-as-is-when-p01953

Andy Warhol screen printed icons of hollywood film stars and the four reigning queens at the time.

"American Pop art emerged suddenly in the early 1960s and was in general characterized by a stark and emblematic presentation that contrasted with the narrative and analytical tendencies of its British counterpart. At its most rigorous, American Pop art insisted on a direct relationship between its use of the imagery of mass production and its adoption of modern technological procedures." 

https://www.moma.org/collection/details.php?theme_id=10170