O China Tree! O China Tree!

Christmas is just round the corner and I’m sure many of you will be thinking about buying a Christmas tree soon. There is one Christmas tree that I found this year that has particularly caught my eye, and it’s in the town of Hasselt, Belgium.

Instead of buying a ‘normal’ Christmas tree, this town has created one out of plates and other pieces of china! From what I’ve learnt from the news, not all the locals love it and would have preferred a real one. One woman even said that she thought it looked too bare.

Thinking about it I think it would be fun if my town had a piece of huge artwork displayed instead of a Christmas tree. The tree that my town has is not that interesting. It has a few lights on it, but it looks just like the one before that and the one before that etc. I think having some art that looks like a tree would be far more interesting. The tree has far more texture to it from the different sized plates. It would also illuminate in the dark because of the vivid white of the china. I think it’s a beautiful piece of work particularly as the plates aren’t all the same. There are also layers of cups randomly placed.

However, if it came to whether I had a piece of art like that for a Christmas tree or a real tree for my home, I think I would always pick the tree. This isn’t because I’m a traditionalist or because I love the smell of a tree (but it is a nice smell!), it’s because a piece of art like that should be appreciated. A piece like that, which is so intriguing and different shouldn’t be locked away from the public, instead it should be in the centre of the town.

 I also love the fact that this art piece isn’t only there to celebrate Christmas; it also is there to celebrate the town’s solidarity. The people of the town donated all the plates and cups and when placed altogether, the tree symbolises the town coming together for this festive season. This is a lovely message to send out, which is why I wish my town did this for Christmas, instead of placing a tree in the middle of town and throwing a few lights round it, then we could send our own message out to celebrate this festive season. Just a thought…

back in the day…

Art in the 13^th Century, the medieval period, was more or less always based on the Bible. Art was for monasteries, churches and such like; people didn’t have it necessarily in their houses, so therefore the main theme would be religion.

Although the art of this time is beautiful, I actually want focus on how different the artists were at this time compared with other periods, like the Renaissance.

First of all, medieval artists were brought up in a very different way. They would start by being apprenticed to a master artist. The artist would be taught techniques by the master and eventually would paint unimportant parts of the painting…under instruction from the master of course. The artist would then learn how to paint apostles, and the Virgin Mary. The artist would then probably be taught how to copy and rearrange scenes from old books into new frames, until he could paint a scene without a pattern/model at all.

With these techniques under an artist’s belt, he could paint any piece of artwork created in the medieval period. However if you asked this artist to sketch the landscape in front of him, he couldn’t do it. This is because artists of this period simply did not sketch. This seems a strange idea to you and me because if you think of an artist you think of them doodling and sketching the whole time.

They also never seem to do actual portraits, which seems strange considering portraits make up a lot of art.  The way in which they would show who they were drawing was to add a crown, or a mitre, and just to make sure they would even write the name below!

It had never seemed to occur to them to sit down in front of the object/person and paint them. This is such a weird idea to me considering some of the greatest pieces art was done like this. So is it right to compare these pieces of art to the paintings of Raphael or Michelangelo? It is important to remember that many techniques had been conquered by the time the Renaissance had come along. But all the same, surely some of the medieval paintings look like sketches when compared to things like the Sistine chapel or paintings of the Madonna.

Both periods have interesting paintings that are good to analyse, but if you had to pick and compare pieces of art from these 2 periods, you would probably say that you think the renaissance art is more ‘arty’ than medieval art, I think I would. Is this because we see ‘art’ as representing scenes of life, therefore art should be representational of the world. Does this mean medieval art isn’t really art? Your decision…

A last point; without 13^th century would the renaissance have happened?

A cat obsession? Louis Wain

 

 

An artist I recently found is Louis Wain. He is particularly known for his drawings/paintings of cats. This may sound quite dull at first, but the interesting thing is that this English artist had Schizophrenia and some psychologists believe that you can see this in his artwork!

 

He lived between 1860 and 1939. He was declared insane sometime in 1924 and was put in a hospital in Tooting. After a short period of time here, people noticed Wain’s talent and a fund was set up for him so that he could live at ease for the remainder of his life.

 

His artwork certainly is individual, and his cats are inimitable. There is so much detail within each picture and there is a vast amount of colour used. He has made the ‘cat’ his own; from portraits to scenes of cats dressed up, Wain has created such an array of cats. It is thought that the paintings with the detailed patterns in are the ones that show his Schizophrenia, but we can’t really know for sure.

 

However these paintings are my particular favourites. He must have spent hours painting these since the patterns are perfectly formed. Some paintings remind me of Eastern paintings, like Buddhism paintings, because of the vivid colours used and the different shapes used. He uses lines of various thickness and curves to create the patterns, and these curves meander round each other to create a busy but orderly effect.

 

In other works, it’s the eyes that define the painting.  He paints large eyes onto cats, forming different expressions; sometimes surprise other times happy. In some of his paintings, he uses bright lime yellow colours for the eyes. This then grasps your attention straight away.

 

I hope from reading these descriptions of his work, you will study further into these weird and fantastic art pieces. Many prints of his work are available online as well as in some art galleries.

Caught Yellow Handed

Some of you may have heard about the vandalism that occurred at the Tate Modern last weekend. The victim was a Rothko painting called ‘Black on Maroon’ and it was part of a series named the Seagram murals. The culprit had written “a potential piece of ‘Yellowism’.” The culprit has in fact come forward as Vladimir Umanets who is the co- founder of ‘Yellowism’. It is believed that he was trying to draw attention to his movement, as well as increase the value of the painting. But what is ‘Yellowism’? All the articles I have read about this story does not in fact explain fully what it is? Vladimir Umanets says that ‘Yellowism’ is different form art. In art, you have the freedom to interpret how you wish. However in ‘Yellowism’, you don’t have the freedom of interpretation. ‘Yellowism’ is an element of contemporary visual culture. In other words, ‘Yellowism’ is an idea mixed into the modern society of art.

In my opinion, I can’t make heads or tails of this movement. Above all, why draw on a piece of artwork in order to attract people to a movement, which isn’t even to do with art? ‘Yellowism’ is not art nor is it anti- art. So a piece of art should not be vandalized for the publicity of a movement that is trying to tear itself away from the art culture…?

However some believe that he did not vandalize Rothko’s painting.He has even said that the writing increases the value of the painting.It is thought Vladimir Umanets was merely expressing himself onto this piece. This then raises questions. Is expressing oneself onto art vandalism? Or just art in itself? Expressing yourself is seen as art, but is it acceptable to express oneself on another’s expression? And if you understood these questions, what then should be done with Vladimir Umanets? Should he get away with it or be fined etc.?

I personally think he is in the wrong. He has used a painting by a famous artist for his own gain. Although many say any publicity is good publicity, I think that whenever ‘Yellowism’ is mentioned now, people will always think of this crime committed, and that can’t be a good thing.

The Noble, and the Webster

I found two more artists this year that I have loved. These two artists actually work together and they are called Tim Noble and Sue Webster. They create interesting shadows from objects they have made out of everyday things like rubbish. They have even been known to use taxidermy creatures in their artwork. Now you may be thinking that this is very weird but their results are so astounding. The shadows created look like Noble and Webster’s head or a crow. Their artwork is very contrasting and distinct and this technique is so curious, I don’t think I had ever seen something like this before.

So a couple of months ago I did my own photo shoot using the technique of Noble and Webster. When I was doing the photo shoot, my current theme for my art was tree shadows. I made a tree out of rubbish.Although my results were not quite the standard of Noble and Webster’s, I did get some interesting and weird results, which worked well with my project.

I really enjoyed doing the photo shoot and I suggest trying it out for yourself. It is quite easy to replicate, so why not have a go?

All you need is some rubbish, a room that can be made fairly dark, a torch/light source, a camera and a blank wall is always useful. Creating the shape out of rubbish is probably the hardest bit. I would recommend doing a tree or something like it as they are quite easy to make out of rubbish, but if you’re feeling adventurous why not try to recreate your own shadow just like Noble and Webster!

Make sure that the sculpture made out of rubbish can stand on its own though, otherwise taking a photo of the shadow will be quite hard…

Black out all the lights in your designated room and place your sculpture about 2 metres away from the wall. Then get your lamp, torch, light source and point it at the sculpture, the shadow should be created against the wall and your ready to photograph it. I took shots of the shadows at different angles and I moved the sculpture around a bit to make the shadow bigger/smaller but have a play and see what works for you.

It’s really good fun, hope you enjoy it and feel free to post your results I’d love to have a look at them. Also have a look at Noble and Webster’s website to see some of their shadow photos for yourself.

olympic art in the park

The Olympics have arrived and as I write this, I see that we have just won our 20^th gold medal. I have managed to visit the Olympic park in London and I thoroughly enjoyed the atmosphere and being dressed in the GB’s flag. However, I am no sports writer and today I’m actually blogging about a sculptor I saw in the park. I don’t know what it’s called or who it’s by- too busy to notice thanks to those dancing coca cola people in the park. If anyone finds out please comment, as I would love to know.

The sculptor I’m talking about is of the classic red phone box you tend to see all over UK. However for some reason, the artist has stuck one of the doors on top of the phone box. Did I forget to mention half of the phone box is buried underground?

This does seem strange but I suppose most of the art in the park was quite odd and random, such as the huge RUN sculptor that apparently lights up at night. But it does make me wonder what the artist was trying to get across with this phone box. I understand why they used a red phone box. All tourists visiting the park would know and recognise our bright red phone boxes just as they would recognise the red buses that go around London. But why is the box half in the ground? Why is a door stuck on the top? It is funny and quite a novel thing to see but why is it in the Olympic park of all places? Particularly since the landscape design of the park is excellent. This red phone box does not seem to fit in with the backdrop of the river and beautiful flowers surrounding it. It feels like someone has literally gone and planted it into the ground and didn’t bother to notice the landscape around them; they didn’t bother to think about where this phone box may fit in. However, maybe that is why this phone box is there- to not fit in? To be honest I can’t be sure and I have never visited any other Olympic park so I have no idea about what sort of sculptors are in Olympic parks. One thing is for sure though; I think it’s one odd sculptor.