Body art

This picture caught my attention because I thought it was amazing how the artist was able to position the mouth of the fish  so that when he opens his mouth, the fish of the mouth also opens. I also like the fact that they painted their face that way in the love of art. I also thought it was funny how the expression of the fish matches the facial expression of the person, the artist must have thought about that as well when he painted the fishes on their faces.

Is so REAL!

I came across this street art painting the other day and I was just utterly amazed by how real the 3D effects is. The painter must have spend so much of his time looking at different angles to make sure that when the audience look at it, it will have a three dimensional effect on them. This 3D street art painting impressed me the most because it stretched through the entire street (well at least when I look at it from this perspective).

Water fountain art

I was surfing the web the other day and I came across this picture of a fountain, and I thought in my mind that this is probably the most unique fountain that I have ever saw. Turns out that the name of this fountain is called North South East West, and it sits in the garden of the Irish Museum of Modern Art in Dublin.The artist who designed this unique fountain was Lynda Benglis, and she is an artist who emphasizes on "getting paint off the wall". I agree with her emphasis that more art should be "off the wall" because art can also be in many different mediums such as ceramics, rubber and rock.

The most popular form of art among teenagers: Japanese anime art

Dragon Ball Z, Pokemon, Gundam, Digimon, any of these names ring a bell? Japanese anime has been very popular in America, and it has been a significant part of our childhood. From the popular addicting pokemon games that took up hours and hours of our time to the Dragon Ball Z action figures, Japanese anime has played a significant role in our childhood. But why is anime so popular, the reason lies behind the art of the anime, the intricate details and the bright colors of its characters and settings lure in many young viewers. Japanese anime also has a huge influence of modern art, many people are exposed to art because of their interest in anime. People try to recreate their favorite anime characters on paper, and therefore got themselves involved in the world of art.

Baxandall Patterns of intention

In Baxandall’s essay, he states that people don’t explain pictures, but instead we explain remarks about pictures. He states that in every explanation there is always an implied description of the painting. This I totally agree with because one can’t explain something about a painting without referring to a particular feature of it. Baxandall also states that a painting cannot be created merely from descriptions, because a painting is much more than merely descriptions. There are things such as colour sequences, spatial relations and even proportions. This is why art is so special, because it can look so simple yet so complicated at the same time.

Las Meninas

At first when I look at this painting, I thought it was just another ordinary painting involving people in Elizabethan clothing. But after reading Foucault's essay and analyzing it in class, I realized that there are much more going on in this painting. Foucault emphasizes the relationship between the artist and the viewer, and after reading his essay, I started to look at the painting in a different way. I was wondering about what the author was trying to tell us, why the characters were positioned this way, and what were they doing. That night I researched about the painting, and it turns out that the people in the painting were royalty, and the two people in the mirrors were King Philip and Queen Mariana. And the position that they were standing would mean that the artist in the painting was painting a portrait of them, while the actual painting Las Meninas was a painting of the artist painting a portrait of the king and queen. I thought this was really interesting because the artist incorporated himself in the painting, and so the real artist (not the one in the painting) was painting a picture of him (the one in the painting) painting a picture of the viewers, which at the time when it was painted, was actually the artist himself! This all sounds very confusing but that’s the beauty of it, art is mysterious and fun.

Aristole V Plato's view on art

After reading Against Interpretation by Sontag, I've learned that Plato and Aristotle each had their own unique view on art. While Plato thinks that art is useless because they are merely imitations of objects that already imitate other things, Aristotle views art as a form of therapy. I have to say however that even as someone who isn't artistic at all, I have to disagree with Plato that art is useless, because I believe that art does play a role in our everyday lives. For an example, in psychology art can determine a person's personality, art can be therapeutic and it can be use to treat many psychological disorders. To conclude, the reason why Plato views art as something not particularly useful is because he had a different definition of art, he views art as only something on paper, while art can be in many different forms.

My first visit to High Museum of Art

So I finally went to the High Museum of art today, and to be honest I really wasn't expecting anything out of it since I am not artistic at all. But surprisingly, I actually find many of the art objects in there fairly interesting. Especially the painting above, The Maximum Speed of Raphael’s Madonna. At first when I look at it, I thought it was just a bunch of spheres arranged in a rectangle, but as I look closely at it I begin to see eyes, lips and an image of a face begin to emerge from the chaotic arrangements of spheres. At that point I was already standing in front of this painting for about 4 minutes, and I think that's the most time I have ever spent on a piece of art work. The more time I spend on this painting the more I discover. I notice that at the bottom of the face, there are a series of crosses, lines and mini spheres, and I realized that it was a necklace. Even though I don't really understand the actual meaning of this painting, the creativity of this painting definitely impressed me. In fact this painting might have opened my mind to the world of art, and so maybe next time when I look at a piece of art, I will actually analyze it and not fall asleep.