Ways of Seeing

For this project I selected Frida Kahlo's Self Portrait with a Necklace of Thorns (see above.) In this painting, Kahlo was mourning her divorce from fellow painter Diego Rivera. The necklace of thorns is her own representation of Christ's crown of thorns; she sees herself as a martyr and in a way she was. Rivera had numerous infidelities while married to Kahlo, which she accepted, asking that he just be loyal to her. However, when she discovered Rivera in the act with her sister, she demanded a divorce- he had broken her loyalty. The crow and the black cat are representative of bad luck and death, while the butterflies are representative of resurrection, a sort of "Frida will rise again" message. The monkey was actually a gift from Rivera to Frida.

I first posted the painting on my window, where you can see the trees without leaves. This I feel aligns with the meaning of the painting the most, very stereotypical of death, barrenness, etc. That and I felt it aligned with the natural visual elements of the piece.

Then I went into the elevator and posted the painting over the floor keys. I did this to contrast the visual parts of the painting with the cold metal of the elevator. In a way, the meaning of the painting is still captured. Kahlo is very cold, very emotionless and so is the elevator. Everything is just very mechanical.

Finally I went back to my room and dumped out my makeup bag over the painting. This time I was just playing with the idea of "lipstick jungle," sort of a play on the visual elements again. Women use all of this makeup to hide what's underneath and Kahlo's painting is so obviously what she really is feeling. Nothing is hiding, it's raw and in your face.

This week, we are to take a work of art and then interpret it into a work of art of our own. So... I'm going to visually interpret Elizabeth Gilbert's journey of self discovery by creating an altered book with her memoir. In her book, she decides that, after a bitter, nasty divorce, she want to relearn to live her life. So she decides to eat her way to pleasure in Italy, learn the art of devotion in an Ashram in India, and finally, learn to love her self and love others in Bali. She's already such a vivid and interesting writer, so I think it's going to be a journey of my own to redo her story and represent it the way I see it. 

When Ends Meet: Convergences In Art

This week in the Fine Arts Workshop, our group had to find convergences (i.e. patterns) in art. We had to select one photograph and one piece of art that follow similar visual patterns. Different tastes often lead to different ideas, however; the three of us found different patterns that appealed to us. Interestingly enough, without consulting each other, we all chose pieces of art with a religious context. Their views can be seen on their respective blogs. Carly found a portrait of a younger mother and her two year old son and compared it to Fra Fillipo Lippi's rendition of the Virgin Mother and Christ child. (www.justapipe.blogspot.com). Julia compared a portrait of an old beggar woman with Donatello's withered statue of Mary Magdalene. (www.signonthewall.blogspot.com).

Being a fiend for Vanity Fair portraits, I chose an Annie Lebovitz frontgate portrait from a couple of years ago of Hollywood's rising stars and compared it to Leonardo Di Vinci's Last Supper. Linearly, the subjects of the two pieces follow the same horizontal plane and the arrangements of the subjects of the photograph mirror those of Jesus' disciples. 

Annie Lebovitz's "Splendor on the Grass" - Vanity Fair April 2000

Leonardo Di Vinci's The Last Supper 1495-1498

Is This Really Andy Goldsworthy?

These are the results of Grand Project Number One of my Fine Arts Workshop. 

Well... some background, I suppose, would be nice. My class was broken into 3 groups of 3 and were sent off into the wild world of our campus, all 3500 acres of it, to create a project that was Andy Goldsworthy... er, worthy (i.e. make art out of nature.)

We (Carly, Julia, and I) just happened to arrange to meet on the first day of rain, 33 degree weather, and ice (the weather gods were either blessing us or making fun of the drowned-cat-misery we were put through... who knows.) The trees were covered in silvery ice and the day was generally cold and dreary... but we decided to strategically nestled rocks and twigs in the branches and nooks and crannies. I think of the tree as art from a design perspective, but if you really wanted to go metaphorical, the tree resembles the universe with it's sweeping branches and objects mirroring stars... or as Carly saw it, "rock babies with their ice mother." Take you pick or completely rewrite the book. 

Rocks in Trees...

More Rocks...

And More...

Trees in Trees...

Tree Fruits... or Something Else? They Look Like "Stars."

So...Andy Goldsworthy worthy? Bah! Is it simply Andy Goldsworthy?