Others on orange Acrylic on canvas August-September 2016 Like many of my peers, doodling has been something I’ve done for as long as I can remember; before formal art instruction became at all part of my reality. I've always been particularly attracted to drawing semi-circles, connecting them together in often triangle-like forms across the page. Last year’s brief foray abstract expressionism set off an endless trail of ideas, including possibly doing something incorporating my long-time doodle design, but I ended up going in a different direction with a piece I was pretty stoked on. With the summer project, I wanted to finally get to create a piece with my signature semicircles. My original idea was to draw the semicircles in charcoal on a blank canvas, then go over them with multiple layers of color, each time using a sponge to erase that particular layer from individual forms, with the intention of creating a piece with a visual history based on my semicircle doodle. Almost immediately, I realized this idea was toast. The charcoal became completely blurred by the very first touches of paint. I decided to go with it, and formed a new plan based fully on impulse. I would do another iteration of the semicircles in charcoal on top of the first layer, add a new color, and repeat, until I could confidently call the piece finished. Suffice to say, I am pleased with how it turned out. The remnants of many layers of charcoal are still somewhat present but not dominating, giving the viewer the ability to take in the visual history of the entire painting.
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This year saw exponential growth in a lot of areas that all contributed to making me feel very ready and incredibly stoked for Art IV. My ability to draw things or people objectively skyrocketed over the course of the year--although the contrast is more the fault of very poor skills in the beginning of the year than anything especially fantastic I drew at the end. However, the growth I experienced as an artist this year is much larger thing than simply my ability to draw a figure. The most important thing that happened in Art III was that I became much more comfortable making independent decisions and serving as the driver for my art both creatively and technically (at least in the pieces I was most committed to, such as the environment project and abex painting--I still was not very self-sufficient on more technically engaged and less expressive pieces like the old master project and oil painting). I still have room to grow, but I no longer need my hand held to make my own art that is powerful and effective. This was a big problem in Art I/II, where I demanded constant attention from Ms. Mosley in order to get anything done. Independence and self-sufficiency are not only good to have, they are almost necessary to have in order to survive in a studio-like environment with 15 others in one classroom during Art IV.
However, the other big thing I learned from Art III was an appreciation of those projects and skills that might not be what I would choose to do myself. I distinctly remember Ms. Mosley saying to my Art I class, with an abstract expressionist piece on the screen, "You have to learn the rules before you can break them." I couldn't bring myself to accept that: how the hell did knowing how to draw a pen and ink still life help Jackson Pollock create his incredible works of abstract badassery? I just wanted to skip what I assumed to be the bullshit and make some cool art. I hung on to that perception all through Art II. Art III, however, turned that notion upside down on its head. I realized how much better abstract art can be with an at least moderately developed understanding of how to draw objectively from life. Figure Fridays, the Old Master Project, the self-portrait--grinding through those increased my understanding of composition, value and space; which, believe it or not, still exist in the abstract. The area I have seen the biggest growth is also the area that needs the most improvement. While I have become much more self-sufficient, I need to be almost completely so next year. This year, home projects served to explore ideas and develop skills, but next year, I will need to be making actual effective art at home, where Coach is not. This is something I can practice with the Dynamic Duo project this summer. The goal is to hit the ground running in September to make the absolute most out of my last year in high school art and my first year as an independent artist. The Center for Visual and Performing Arts- known as the Annex to students at Suitland High School in District Heights, MD- came into being as a magnet art curriculum following court-ordered desegregation reforms in Prince George's County, Maryland. Since then, the program has withered endless budget cuts and threats to its capability and even existence inside a crumbling school building.
But this hasn't stopped anyone at Suitland. With only $1,000 allotted annually for the program's 65 students (total-not individually), teachers dip into their own pockets to find adequete supplies, and the results have been incredible. Students dealing with issues such as drug abuse and eviction at home are at receiving scholarships to highly prestigious art schools. The Class of 2005 specifically was one to remember: Sam Vernon, one of Complex's "15 Young Black Artists Making Waves in the Art World," is currently featured in three Brooklyn shows; and Eric Mack, one of Forbes' "30 Under 30 Promising Talents in Visual Art and Design," has an upcoming show in Paris. This seemed incredible to me, and obviously many others. Only one thing is greater than the incredible adversity many students at Suitland face: their dedication to and the quality of their art. Still working out how to attach the rider to the bike and make all his limbs remain in a somewhat more natural position. Also missing a syringe. Hope to finish this for good this week but recently storing the tape figure in a dressing room led to drama club damaging it a good bit, so that's another thing I have to take care of before this can finally get on display.
This past weekend was "Arts in the Park" at Dogwood Dell, following the RVA Street Art Festival last week at the Southern States silos in Manchester. My dad had gone over, as our family knows several of the artists who come every year either personally or from having bought their art before, and came back raving about this guy Ed Reims. He described the paintings as distinctly impressionist, with a lot of emotion put into them in the middle of a festival where a lot of artists are trying to just do something trendy. I decided to stop by on my ride the next day and got a chance to look at Reims' paintings. I was also very impressed. We didn't buy any paintings this weekend but I think my dad is in communication with Reims about maybe getting one in the future. Here are some paintings from his website and facebook page.
The “Roaring 20s,” America’s “Jazz Age,” was a “Golden” period in US history, when everything seemed to be shining of a golden hue and the country was reaping the benefits of industrial capitalism. It is pieces like Thomas Benton’s “America Today” that remind us that despite the lack of color film, this decade was full of color—and as it seemed to many, more so than any other time before.
This prosperity and indulgence was not universal, however; it was built on the backs of those working in factories and on railroads. The mechanization of industry did not reduce the need for manpower because it increased production levels to previously unimaginable yields. As The New York Times notes, Benton’s mural conveys the hard work and struggles of groups all over the country, from Western farmers and factory workers in Northeast cities. The seemingly random yet precise and organized divisions within and between the panels highlight contrasts between these different individuals while also allowing the viewer to see each component as one piece in a whole system—in this case, the mural, but metaphorically, a factory and then, by extension, the American economy. The piece accurately and carefully visualizes the new assembly line system, with many different workers all doing small tasks at once to create a finished product. Benton’s work definitely displays these multiple moments in time. In his connection post to the Armory Show article, Davis also talks about how a painting by Marchel Duchamp—Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2 (1912)—also visualized multiple moments in time in a two-dimensional work. Duchamp painted a figure as if it was painted many times, at different angles and places along the staircase. While it was from a slightly earlier time, Duchamp’s painting was part of the lead-up to the Roaring 20s and all of their golden glory. Davis noted that the critic Julian Street called the golden painting “an explosion in a shingle factory,” once again touching on the industrial nature of the early-20th century. My Awareness post is actually inspired by my Experience post: I thought back to another time when an installation artwork left me with a complex and thought-provoking sensation after viewing it. On last year’s DC Field Trip, I remembered seeing a massive piece called The Dangerous Logic of Wooing, an incredible installation that completely filled one of the Hirshhorn’s large third-floor rooms. The piece, by Brazilian artist Ernesto Neto, consists of massive lycra and nylon bags suspended from the ceiling, filled with styrofoam and rice. Each form is supposed to represent a different body, some being, and they are trying to court each other, inexplicably intertwined to the point of not being able to tell which body a given bag belongs to. The lowest bags are hanging nearly all the way to the floor, and many more you have to duck your head to avoid. Walking around the room really makes you feel like you are inside the piece, that you can see its inner workings, as opposed to a painting on a wall which you are always outside of. The sense of space and the connection the viewer feels while experiencing Neto’s piece is unlike anything else I have ever seen, yet it does share some similarities with other installation art, such as the Laib Wax Room, in that it creates a multidimensional experience with the viewer, and this ability of installation art to interact is definitely something I would love to create in my own art. One weekend this January, I was in Washington with my dad for an appointment and after we ate lunch near DuPont Circle we decided to go to the Phillips Collection. I had been there before but not in a while, and I remembered really liking it. It proved being better than I remembered; the collection contains a comprehensive journey of some of the most famous and influential modern art from around the world, from Courbet to Cezanne to Miró. But something that left a lasting and interesting impression on me was not a painting, but rather 440 melted pounds of beeswax lined in a 6x7x10 foot room, illuminated by one single lightbulb suspended from the ceiling. The Laib Wax Room, installed by German artist Wolfgang Laib, is a permanent installation at the Phillips, and is really a cool experience. The room is strangely calming yet unnerving: the warm golden hue combined with the physical warmth from the slightly heated wax that surrounds you is almost therapeutic until you realize that you’re in a room smaller than a jail cell with an underground sense of space in every direction. It was at this point that I quickly strode out of the room, but I was still amazed and impressed at the work’s ability to impose such a sensation on me. Nearly a century apart, the 1913 Armory Show and Charles Saatchi’s 1999 “Neurotic Realism” curation share a desire to push the envelope of what people are willing to accept. The Armory Show sought to align American art with the new rebellious, avant-garde styles and movements that were taking place in Europe at the time—or, more realistically, to see if American art consumers would allow American art to take this rebellious stance towards the academic art that had been the status quo for many centuries. Saatchi’s “Neurotic Realism” tried to see if people would develop connections between random pieces of art when grouped together under the umbrella of an “-ism.”
The New York Armory Show took place in the early years of modern art, when the average person would most likely classify art solely as a purposefully realistic objective depiction of something in the physical world. Thus it isn’t surprising that such a backlash occurred when people were told that something purposefully unrealistic or nonobjective was art, and just as much so as a Baroque portrait. Now, or in 1999 when the “Neurotic Realism” show was held, people are more willing to accept something as art when they are told it is so, even if that acceptance is reluctant or even ignorant. What people will challenge, however, is the title that art is given. People have expectations about what they will be seeing when they go to a photorealist show, for example: if they see anything that isn’t so technically immaculate that it could pass for a photograph, they will say that the piece is not part of the photorealist umbrella. It is art, but it isn’t the kind of art they were told it would be. “America’s First Art War” states (in reference to Duchamp’s multilateral and multidimensional Nude Descending a Staircase (No. 2)) that “what is really frustrating to a viewer is a false start, not a foregone conclusion.” What is pleasing to a viewer is when their expectations are confirmed by what they’re seeing. When their expectations are not realized, it irritates the viewer’s mind. This happened at the Armory Show in 1913, but it also happened in 1999 with “Neurotic Realism,” for different reasons. In “The Ism That Isn’t,” the author states that “painting, according to the dictates of an ism, means imposing an agenda, a slogan, on the supposedly free eye.” What connects pieces of the same ism is that that agenda is uniform between them, even if it is applied in different ways. This is where the two articles connect. A viewer going to see the “Neurotic Realism” show has the expectation of seeing pieces connected under the same doctrine of how they stimulate the free eye. When the pieces are not creating this effect uniformly, the viewer becomes frustrated at the apparent “false start.” They were told the agenda would be the same, and it isn’t. However, “Neurotic Realism” defeats the purpose of an ism. An ism is meant to further art into the future by organizing general trends and techniques, but “isms that aren’t” hinder the progression of art by destroying the meaning attached to the medium of progression: the ism. |
Max FrankelI ride bikes, take pictures and study Art IV at Maggie Walker Governor's School. Archives
April 2017
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