Final Project Analysis

   This piece of art has a very basic base image to it, but is very complex in terms of color and pattern schemes. It looks and reminds of a piece of pop art because of the widely recognized symbol in it and the use of repetition of the same image throughout the piece.
   One of its main aspects is repetition. It is a constant image of what looks to be like the Apple logo with just different color schemes and patterns. There are twelve different individual images in the piece. This helps create an overall image to the viewer, being that there are some many individual ones it makes up a greater picture. The second piece of the work that stands out to me is the contrast between the colors of the background and the colors inside the Apple logo. All of the colors for the most part that are inside of the logo are very bright and vibrant colors. Then all the colors of the background are mostly dull and lighter than the others. This helps the Apple logo stand out to the viewer. Due to the fact that each square is a different color background this also helps each one stand out. Another piece of the image that was interesting to me was the use of many different patterns and the fact that none were used twice. This made each one stand out as its own and gave each one its unique type of style and look. Another element that I stood out to me was that the layout of the piece is vertical. This makes the viewers eye start at the top left of the piece and almost read it like a book. The eye then goes all the way to the right and then restarts on the left side and keeps going until the end of the piece. This makes the viewer look at every individual piece and makes them see the differences of each one.
   First the denotative meaning of the piece is that it is many images of the apple logo in different colors and patterns.
   The way that this picture made me feel was excited and alive due to all of the different vibrant colors that pop out to the viewer. Though as I looked closer I began to have the feeling of uniqueness because each box was so unique and different from all the other ones. Except after I looked at the piece for a while the uniqueness went away and I began to feel dull or one because each image was fundamentally the exact same. Therefore, none of them became unique anymore and they were the exact same.
   There are a couple of meanings that I got when looking at this piece of artwork. One of them is that each individual iPhone or apple product a person has is unique and different depending on the persons personality. I got this because of the uniqueness of each individual piece from the next. Due to the repetition each one could represent a person and then the different color and pattern schemes represents how each product is unique from the next due to the user. Another meaning that this piece had me think was that society is controlled so much through this one image or company, Apple. This is because of the repetition and change in patterns and colors. There are twelve individuals images of the same exact Apple logo but with just different colors and what not and they all seem different. Except any single person could go up and know that those were the Apple logos. That is why I think the artist is trying to say that companies and the image of products like this control our society and are the only thing we really focus on. Lastly, because of the repetition of the piece I thought that maybe the artist was trying to say that everyone is deep down the exact same. This is because the base image of all the squares is the Apple logo, representing the heart of people. The repetition makes it seem like the artist is trying to represent something big such as the world population or people join general.
   Overall, I really enjoyed this piece and it was visually pleasing to look at. This is because of all the wonderful colors and the uniqueness of the patterns.

Intention Statement

What I hope to achieve by creating work in vein of Andy Warhol? Well, I hope to create a visually pleasing image from far away. I want the colors to really pop out to the viewers and I want the whole piece to look really awesome when all the individual images are put together. Lastly, I want to achieve the type of meanings and critics that Warhol created in his work. I want people to question society and what the media and consumer mindset is doing to this country. The aspects of his that I am going to be trying to do the same are the repetition of the same image and the really vibrant and multi colored image with a dull background. I also am going to try creating almost the same amount of images he created in his pieces though that may be hard. The one thing I am changing is that in most of his work he used screen-printing and I do not have the resources to do that, so instead I am just changing what I use to create the piece in every individual image. I want to still get the same result in terms of the concept that people bring out of it. I want people to critic society and know what I am trying to say through my art, which Warhol was very good at. I want people to look at my piece and realize what a company like Apple is doing to this society. We are all so consumed by its products and new inventions that we forget the real issues of the world. People are more excited for Apples new products than the upcoming election.

George Kublar and David Byrne

    I thought that this reading from George Kublar was actually one of the more interesting readings we have had this year. I think that it is just complicated enough to make it interesting but it is also simple enough where you can just read it once or twice and get what Kublar is saying. This was by far one of the best readings we have had this year.
   One of my favorite parts of this reading is when Kublar says, "it is meaningless to debate whether Leonardo was more talented than Raphael." I think that this is a great point because you are never going to be able to prove if an artist is more talented than another. Each artist has their own ways of painting, own styles and own methods that you just cannot compare to each other. He makes a great point and says that they are both equally talented and just use their talent in different ways and methods. Also he says you can not compare artists talent wise because they are brought up in different time periods, around different environments that are not usually the same. He says that talent is not the difference between artists but how they got to their brilliant talent and the events it took to get there.
   Kublar begins to talk about how ideas can spread and compares how artists to scientists. He says that if there are two artists that go to two different schools they have nothing to learn from each other, and seems to compare this to biologists or chemists some how. This part of the reading was pretty confusing to me I really didn't understand what Kublar was trying to say and had to re read it a couple times to try to wrap my head around it. He then starts to talk about how every artists seems to be obsessed with something. For example he says Cezanne was obsessed with painting landscapes.
   Lastly, he begins to talk about the artists and their place in society. He says that the artists used to be categorized as an entertainer and their art was just meant to entertain people. He says that today the artists is a not a rebel nor an entertainer. He says that to be a rebel requires too much work for the artist. He says that the artists are "like Dedalus, the strange artificer of wonderful and frightening surprises for his immediate circle."
   This was a really well written reading and probably one of my favorite ones this year. I really like some of the points that Kublar made and thought they were very insightful.

    The David Bryne book was very interesting. It was a truly nice visual experience but a little odd at the same time. It was cool to see a book like that made entirely from powerpoint. I think that it was a cool idea to create this piece of art and I would really like to see the DVD he made of it. I thought it was pretty insightful and was a very different take on conceptual art and was refreshing and interesting.

Escaping Flatland

I thought that this book was not hard to read but was really hard to just follow what the writer was saying throughout. He seems to bounce around from example to example which makes me a little confused. It really just does not make sense to me because he is just randomly talking about random things, object, and animals. I can't really see how the examples connect to his point that everything in our world is a flat object that we look at. Only thing that I can see that connects to the "flatland" is that the things he is talking about is possibly flat and thats the only similarity I could find to his point. It seems like he really doesn't support his point that everything in our world is flat or doesn't connect it to a higher idea. But then I began to possibly see how all of this space talk and scientific analysis began to connect to the dimensions and how it has created two dimensions. I like how it starts to touch a little bit on the fourth dimension. I like all of the cool diagrams and interesting figures that are scattered throughout the whole piece, I think it really helps the reader kind of grasp what he is saying. Overall I thought that this piece was fun to read and look at, but it was very difficult to grasp the concept and ideas that were being put forth. I feel like you would possibly need to read it over three or fours times to really get the point and facts the author is trying to get across.

Three Artists

1. Frank Stella
The reason I want to do Frank Stella is because I think that his style of art is awesome. I love the bright vibrant colors combined with the intricate patterns, it makes the pieces very psychedelic. Also Frank was the youngest artist to have the Museum of Modern Art do a retrospective on his work. Lastly, I really like how his work is extremely abstract and catches your eye making it open for lots of different interpretations.

2. Andy Warhol
The reason I would want to research Andy Warhol is similar to the reason I want to research Frank Stella, their artistic style is very unique and abstract. His work is filled with extremely vibrant and abstract colors combined with very recognizable images, making it an extremely interesting style. I would love to learn more about this iconic art figure and more about his artistic style.

3. Wayne Thiebaud
I would like to research Wayne Thiebaud because I find his paintings very pleasing to the eye. They are different from the normal art that I like to look at, the abstract and almost chaos looking. His work is very calming, even though some still have a lot of good color, they make me relax and pleasure my eyes. Also a lot of his paintings are of deserts and I would love to research and learn why he chose this as the staple of his pieces.

John Berger Insight

   This article talks a lot about how the we look and see things in our world. One of the insights from this article is that we have control over everything we turn to look at with our eyes. You may think that you are blindly looking around the world, but you actually are choosing everything you see. Berger also say that when we decide to touch an object we then create a relation with it. I don't really know if I totally agree with Berger's statement here that we chose what we get to see. This is because for me when I am walking around my day I kind of am forced to look at things while I walk through campus or in class that maybe I don't really want to look at. I agree that sometimes you have the power and chose to see what you want, but I don't really think that the world goes the way that Berger seems to see it.
   The next insight that I found was when he begins to talk about how images were first made to create something that was not there, and he begins to say how images began to outlast the object or person it represented. A point that I really like that he makes is that, with an image like that we are now able to see how people looked at that image during that time. I thought that this was a very interesting insight on images because I never really thought about that when looking at old photographs or paintings, and I thought that it was actually pretty accurate.
 

Texture Pictures

Pau Klee: The Thinking Eye

Paul Klee's article was a little far fetched for me, and actually made it difficult for me to read and interpret. The whole idea of the difference between a point, a line, and a plane, and how it had to deal with tension between two of them did not really make sense to me. I just felt like that idea was a little bit too abstract for me to really wrap my head around. Even though I didn't agree with some of his comments about lines and planes, I did agree with some of them.
   One of Klee's points that I thought was very interesting was the one he makes about a free line. He says a free line is just a line that goes everywhere, one that really has no place it is going. I really loved the metaphor he used about a free line, "it goes out for a walk, so to speak, aimlessly for the sake of the walk." I thought this comparison was spot one, because when I look at a line that is really how it looks to me, that it just went out for a random walk for no apparent reason. Another point that I really liked in this piece is when he explains what an Active Line looks like. How he says that with each stop a long the ay the line is just itching to get to the next point. I think this is a really could analyze of what this kid of line looks like and how it makes you feel when you look at it.

  Klee's next point is the one that I do not really seem to understand or agree with. This is when he says that linear tension is discharged between two lines to create a plane. I could see how someone could think this, but I just think that this idea is too abstract and out of the box to be considered correct. Klee then begins to indulge in what a shaded in shape really is. He shows that in reality it is just a bunch of lines extremely close together. How could I not agree to that? That point makes complete logical sense, unlike his point about tension.
   Lastly, I didn't completely understand the differences between why different shapes and lines were passive, middle, or active. The only thing that I really got from it was the tow of the pictures were flipped when one was linear and one was planar.
  I thought that this was a pretty good article overall, I liked a lot of the comparisons and metaphors he used to describe lines. It just made me frustrated that I could not really get some of the biggest concepts in the article.

The Whole Ball of Wax. What is Art?

The piece "The Whole Ball of Wax" by Jerry Saltz was a little bit confusing to me while reading it. Some of his analogies and metaphors about what art does to people and the world puzzles me and I can't really grasp what he is trying to say. The article starts out talking about two people Laura Hoptman and Peter Eleey and how they say that art has some "magical power" and, in fact, changes the world. 
   The article then begins to go into that art cannot stop issues such as world hunger or global warming, but has a different impact on the world. Art can change the views of the world on different topics and issues to one side or the other. Saltz explains that art is just as part of intelligence as science, religion, etc. This article then takes off into the direction that art is a way to creating new ideas. Art is a necessary part of the world and we would not be able to go without it. Saltz then goes on to quote different artists and philosophers  and concludes with the statement that art is an experience. Then he begins to dive into how art can help change the world in small increments. He describes how looking at art can change the moods of humanity and help people feel better during some of the most traumatic events in history. This experience right here is how art can change the world. The change can be very  slow but over time it will prevail to produce a change. 
   One of the last points of this article is that art can be perceived in ways that the artist is not even intending for. Saltz gives the example of how when art is considered extremely political, it was actually intended not to be, and vice versa. This happens, Saltz says, because art provokes new ideas and thought structures. The last point that Saltz makes is a comparison. He compares art to a cat, because when you call a cats name and ask it to come here, it looks at you then rubs its body on another object and lays down. This shows that the cat and yours relationship has a third aspect, the object he rubs up against, so in order for you to comprehend the cat you have to think more in a curved line than in a straight one. This is why Saltz says art is a cat. 
   

To me art is something that helps start conversation about controversial topics in our world. Art is almost everything in our world, and is a catalyst to get people to see problems that are going on in the world, art helps open the eyes of the world.