Christian Boltanski, as an artist, has placed an importance on the theme of memories and how they can be used to suppress the idea of despair. Memories are seen as a powerful tool in order to diffuse these ideas of despair and disillusionment in a modern world. A large portion of humanity has learned to base most of their individual identities on collective experiences as a whole. Much of Boltanski’s work explores how some of that individualism gets lost within shared experiences through the concept of memory. As an artist, this significant theme used in his work has helped re-establish a certain sense of belonging in correlation to his own identity and what it has transformed into. This form of remembering is incorporated in his own work as a way of defining his universal sense of belonging. Christian Boltanski presents a collective understanding over the loss of his true identity in his work involving the theme of memories through the representation of images and material objects.
Boltanski has contributed to the art world for several years now and through that time; the media (as well as other observational sources) has kept an overflowing archive of information on him as an artist. Although most of the information we, as viewers, remember him by are most likely true, we can never really know how much these opinions and observations about him have altered his sense of self and what he truly belongs to. Boltanski has expressed in multiple interviews how these biographies have slowly disintegrated the story of his life and how his work has illustrated a new purpose his life now represents.
Being a multi-media artist, Boltanski has expressed his ideas and messages through numerous types of elements in his works. Photography has pl...
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...d due to what ‘we’ ultimately decide to remember about him; his viewers in the end will be the ones who define what group he belongs to since the true reality of his past has been lost.
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Since its emergence over 30,000 years ago, one of visual art’s main purposes has been to act as an instrument of personal expression and catharsis. Through the mastery of paint, pencil, clay, and other mediums, artists can articulate and make sense of their current situation or past experiences, by portraying their complex, abstract emotions in a concrete form. The act of creation gives the artist a feeling of authority or control over these situations and emotions. Seen in the work of Michelangelo, Frida Kahlo, Jean Michel-Basquiat, and others, artists’ cathartic use of visual art is universal, giving it symbolic value in literature. In Natasha Trethewey's Native Guard, Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go, and Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness,
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Although Nauman is now one of the most talked about artists in today’s world, art was not always his main interest. As a child Nauman was shy and often alone, as a result he was very passionate about music. He studied piano, guitar, and upright bass and played in bands throughout high school and college. Having a childhood filled with music has influenced his works and contributes to the success of his use of sound and rhythm in his videos and installations. Nauman graduated from college into a career of painting but soon realized that he could not get the reactions from his viewers that he wanted through the medium of paint and began to explore sculpture. His sculptures are known for being non-functional and being made from “non-art” materials. Nauman then turns to incorporating video and sound into his sculptural installations, and then creating complete video works. In his later years he begins producing “sculptures” that are neon signs, often provocative and suggestive. Throughout Nauman’s life, he has continued to influence the art world through each of his ...
At the first glimpse of Art and Vladek, there is a sharp view of Art’s childhood. Crying over b...
The poem, “Remember”, by Joy Harjo illuminates the significance of different aspects in one’s life towards creating one’s own identity. Harjo, explains how everything in the world is connected in some way. She conveys how every person is different and has their own identities. However, she also portrays the similarities among people and how common characteristics of the world impact humans and their identities. Harjo describes the interconnectedness of different aspects of nature and one’s life in order to convey their significance in creating one’s identity.
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It has been stated that the application of memory functions in fictional works which act as a reflective device of human experience. (Lavenne, et al. 2005: 1). I intend to discuss the role of memory and recollection in Kazuo Ishiguro’s dystopian science-fiction novel Never Let Me Go (2005).
...1. Influenced by the futurists and is known to have been one of the founders of Constructivism, he left painting because of its decorative aspect and subjectivity. He was more interested in carrying on a universal language and believed that art should serve a cause. In these harsh terms he completely discarded painting, saying “Down with art if it is an escape route from a meaningless life! Not for art that reproduces the external world, prettifying it with a decorative mantle, but for a constructive art that reflects our way of life.” (The Future is our only Goal) This quote is embedded in my mind as I think of Rodchenko’s line of work and how he was against the painterly aesthetic but managed to undertake painting once again in his last years of his career. A medium that he left forgotten throughout his work describes both the start and end of his career.