Currently at the MCA Denver there are three exhibitions: Ryan McGinley, “The Kids Were Alright.”, Jean-Michel Basquiat, “Basquiat Before Basquiat”, and Wall Writers Graffiti In Its Innocence. All of which displayed intimate and thought provoking pieces of art from talented artists on the East coast. All three floors of the exhibit allowed for the viewers to grasp a better understanding of the early career of each artist. Jean-Michel Basquiat was an American artist born in Brooklyn in 1960. His art focused on “suggestive dichotomies”, like integration versus segregation, wealth versus poverty, and inner versus outer experience. He used social commentary in his artwork in order to attack the power structures and racism in America. During his …show more content…
He used archival material in order to exemplify a rare insight into his life before he was recognized as an artist in the 1980s. Alexis stated, “From mid 1979 to mid 1980, I lived with Jean-Michel Basquiat in an apartment that we moved into and shared on East 12th Street. This was a time before Jean had canvases to work with, so he used whatever he could get his hands on, as he was constantly creating. The derelict street of the East Village provided his raw materials ad he would bring his finds up the six flights of stairs to incorporate into his work.” Basquiat uniquely would paint on There are actual objects Basquiat painted on objects like a Pepto-Bismol bottle, a briefcase, a refrigerator, and a television. An interesting piece displayed is Basquiat’s painted sweatshirts. He would paint on clothing and sell them for $80.00, in order to pay for his rent that month. They are displayed at MCA Denver allows for us, the viewers, to see both sides of the sweatshirts. They are placed in a line formation with mirrors lining the bottom so you can see both sides of the sweatshirt art. Immediately when I walked in the scribbled-on photo of the refrigerator caught my eye. It says, “grape jelly.” In bold writing with black lines scribbled below. The simplicity, and almost childlike drawing I found to be very captivating and thought provoking. It makes you think to …show more content…
Ryan McGinley’s earliest photography days from from 1998 to 2003 are the showcase of the exhibit. According to MCA Denver, “The photographs present intimate moments of both exhilaration and introspection, often within a mundane setting, and demonstrate a sweeping range of emotions. McGinley’s works capture the essence of his lifestyle at the time: gritty, daring, and focused on moments of both pleasure and tedium, as well as illicit activities. Un-staged and unedited, McGinley’s use of light imbues all of the works with an intensity and profound emotional depth.” McGinley’s way of portraying exact moments with unedited raw footage, is what makes his photography so relatable in a sense. McGinley’s work displays the recklessness his tightknit friend group lived by. He captured the lives of his transgressive friends, the drama in their lives, and brought together his audience with highly intimate
For my museum selection I decided to attend Texas State University’s Wittliff Collection. When I arrived, there was no one else there besides me and the librarian. To be honest, I probably would have never gone to an art museum if my teacher didn’t require me to. This was my first time attending the Wittliff Collection, thus I asked the librarian, “Is there any other artwork besides Southwestern and Mexican photography?” She answered, “No, the Wittliff is known only for Southwestern and Mexican photography.” I smiled with a sense of embarrassment and continued to view the different photos. As I walked through Wittliff, I became overwhelmed with all of the different types of photography. There were so many amazing pieces that it became difficult to select which one to write about. However, I finally managed to choose three unique photography pieces by Alinka Echeverria, Geoff Winningham, and Keith Carter.
Johnson, Brooks. Photography Speaks: 150 Photographers on their Art.” New York: Aperture Foundation Inc., 2004. Print.
Georges-Pierre Seurat was a French Post-Impressionist painter, as well as a fine draftsman. He was born and raised in a wealthy family in Paris on December 2, 1859. He lived a short life of thirty-one year of age, and in his time, Seurat not only invented his style of pointillism, but he also became the first Neo-Impressionist. In pointillism, Seurat used miniscule dots of various colors on a base color to produce the local color. This creates an optical mixture from afar for the viewer and makes the image livelier. As the first Neo-Impressionist, he systematically painted his works instead of the rough brushworks of the earlier Impressionists (Chu 410-411, Gage 452, Georges). Since Seurat first started to dig deep into the arts when he was merely sixteen, he really changed the modern art world within 15 years; barely half of his life! Seurat truly worked hard to get the reputation he has today and his works are unquestionably phenomenal through his techniques he used.
It’s his compassion for his subjects and his commitment to them that surpasses the act of making a pretty picture. Spending days with his subjects in the slums of Harlem or the hardly developed mountains of West Virginia, he immerses himself into the frequently bitter life of his next award-winning photo. Often including word for word text of testimonials recorded by junkies and destitute farmers, Richards is able to provide an unbiased portrayal. All he has done is to select and make us look at the faces of the ignored, opinions and reactions left to be made by the viewer. Have you ever been at the beach safely shielded by a dark pair of sunglasses and just watched?
The Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit (MOCAD) had three different artists work on display. It was split up into three different rooms the first room was Design 99 To Much of a Good Thing and in the next room is Latoya Ruby Frazier Mother May I and in the last room was Jef Geys Woodward Avenue. The art that was on display was not traditional art work. All of the artist’s work displayed in the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit was out of the box thinking. The flow in each exhibit made it easy to move from one piece of art work to another piece of work.
Richmond Barthé was born in Bay St. Louis, Mississippi on January 28, 1901. Richmond was born in a hard time for African Americans. He demonstrated incredible guarantee as a craftsman at a youthful age, however as a Colored American in the South, he was banished from selecting in any of the craft schools in New Orleans, Louisiana, close to his home. At eighteen his area minister in New Orleans and an author for the New Orleans Times Picayune distinguished his capability. Richmond was eventually admitted to the Art Institute of Chicago, after struggling to get admitted to an art school. He began to study sculpture, which denoted a defining moment in his profession. After Barthe graduated in 1928, he opened up a studio in Harlem, where he stayed permanently in 1930. Nonetheless, ending up progressively disregarded by a symbolized world that had come to esteem deliberation an imaginative style which held no enthusiasm for him; Barthé moved to Jamaica in the late 1940s, and later existed in Switzerland and Italy before coming back to the United States in 1969. His career in Jamaica flourished, till he later decided to come back home to the states. Overall Richmond Barthe received many honors and awards including: Rosenwald Fellowship, Guggenheim Fellowship, Audubon Artists Gold Medal in 1950, and awards for interracial justice and honorary degrees from Xavier and St. Francis Universities. Overall this artist intrigues me as I’m sure it was extremely hard to start off. He was born during the worst times in America, racism throughout his life and then leading into the great depression. I’m glad he was able to express himself through the art that he published.
West 31st Street, NY: Chelsea House, 2009. Print. Fitzpatrick, Virginia. Art history: a contextual inquiry course.
North, Michael. “Stein, Picasso, and African Masks.” In Three Lives and Q.E.D., edited by Marianne DeKoven, 429-440. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2006.
Mark Rothko is recognized as one of the greatest artists of the twentieth century and during his lifetime was touted as a leading figure in postwar American painting. He is one of the outstanding figures of Abstract Expressionism and one of the creators of Color Field Painting. As a result of his contribution of great talent and the ability to deliver exceptional works on canvas one of his final projects, the Rothko Chapel offered to him by Houston philanthropists John and Dominique de Menil, would ultimately anchor his name in the art world and in history. Without any one of the three, the man, the work on canvas, or the dream, the Rothko Chapel would never have been able to exist for the conceptualization of the artist, the creations on canvas and the architectural dynamics are what make the Rothko Chapel a product of brilliance.
Three blank white canvases are put on display as a triptych in a prestigious French art gallery. Paintings that look more like hastily scribbled pencil marks, or seem to resemble a child’s graffiti on a blackboard, are sold for over four million dollars. Some viewers and critics would venture to ask, “What’s the big deal?” or comment, “My six year-old could do that.” Although normally I enjoy abstract, experimental art – being such a painter myself – I do not believe Cy Twombly to be a “worthy” artist.
So I attempted to use this mentality whilst exploring the Highline, allowed the mindset to fill me with energy and then reflected on what I liked and didn’t like about the limitless attitude once I walked back towards Gansevoort Street. When I saw Kathryn Andrews’ “Sunbathers II” piece, I went inside the piece, and smiled while my cousin took a photo of me. I then continued to roamed through Chelsea while observing the people, billboards, paintings and the skyline, and was struck by the Sleepwalker sculpture. When Zadie Smith comes face-to-face with Corona’s “Find Your Beach” advertisement, she begins to analyze and find possible interpretations of the billboard sign. I then began to examine the Sleepwalker sculpture and discussed several potential inferences towards Manhattan the artwork might have with my cousin Michelle. I then got some stracciatella gelato, and Michelle got a coffee. With my recent purchases in hand, I was taken surprise by Andrews’ “Sunbathers I”. Michelle and I laughed
Jean Francois Millet, who was a social realist painter who inspired Van Gogh, and he studied at the Barbizon School. He painted rural life to show the poverty stricken people, capturing the lives of peasants at work. Making a statement on what is taking place in the world. Communicating through art to expose the poor conditions and physical hardships that hard working people are enduring. It is an invitation, to look into the working class environment, which is gritty, real and true. This stirred up controversy, because of its honest approach.
When I imagine an artist, I picture a Parisian dabbing at a sprawling masterpiece between drags on a cigarette seated in an extravagantly long holder. He stands amid a motley sea of color, great splashes of vermillion and ultramarine and yellow ochre hiding the tarp on the studio floor. Somehow, not one lonely drop of paint adorns his Italian leather shoes with their pointed toes like baguettes.
An artwork that stood out in the exhibition was School of Beauty, School of Culture (2012) . It portrays women and two children standing in a beauty salon and school with green walls and a red floor. The walls have posters promoting black beauty with one that reads, “it’s your hair” and under this statement are the words love, dark and lovely. There are mirrors against the wall and in the reflection a camera flash is shown from a person who is taking a picture of those in the salon. Red, black, and green, the colors of the Afro-American flag, border the top of the wall, symbolizing the black power movement . The focal point of this piece is a woman who stands in the center, posing for the person taking a picture. To her right, towards the floor, is a “floating” head of a white woman which is compressed and 2-dimensional. This is a tribute to Hans Holbein’s The Ambassadors (1533) because in Holbein’s piece, there is a 2-dimensional skull painted in the same fashion. Just how the skull in The Ambassadors is a reminder of death, the head in Marshall’s
Paul Gauguin was a leading French post impressionist artist whose focus was his imagination. He worked in a studio and experimented with color. His wo...