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Andy Warhol

Andy warhol within the presentations the most recognizable one was about the andy warhol. What I remember from the presentation my friends talked about his life, how he became related with the art, mass production and consumerism. First of all, American Pop artist Andy Warhol was one of the most significant and productive figures of his time, his works exploring the connection between celebrity culture and artistic expression.

When he was eight years old, he contracted a neurological disease, which confined him to bed. To keep him entertained during his recovery, his mother gave him drawing lessons. After his recovery he continued to draw. Warhol was an extremely successful consumer and designer. Warhol was one of the artists that felt the need to bring back imagery into his work. The gallery owner and interior designer Muriel Latow gave Warhol the idea of painting soup cans, when she suggested to him that he should paint objects that people use every day. He used the techniques of his trade to create an image that is both easily recognizable, but also visually stimulating. He mostly used silkscreen technique in his artworks. The world was fascinated with Andy Warhol, his look, his aesthetic, and the attitude of his Pop Art movement. Here are some famous artworks of Andy Warhol,

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Frida Kahlo

Our presentation topic was about Frida Kahlo and her surrealistic style. First of all I want to talk about her life in general shortly. Frida was considered one of the greatest artists who began painting mostly self-portraits after she was severely injured in a bus accident. With the bus accident she had several surgeries and this changed her life. She had to confined to a bed for a while. While she was bedridden she started to paint. And this was the time she reconnected with Diego Rivera, she wanted to ask his opinions about her paintings, then they found themselves in a romantic relationship and married next year. But they had a very problematic relationship. They divorced in 1939 and remarried a year later. Now I want to mention her one artwork which I admire, "What the Water Gave Me". Not like most of her paintings, this painting doesn't have a dominant main focus. We see many symbolic representations from her life and different events in her life. Also we see other familiar elements. For instance, we see her parents portraits from her "My Grandparents, My Parents and I" painting. Also, we see many other elements from her previous paintings like; a dead humming bird, a wimbled shell, a traditional dress and two female lovers and so on. The style that she used in this painting is quite surrealistic.

We confront different emotional situations like sadness, happiness maybe, pain, her past and present. And in the middle of the images we see Frida lying in the middle. She seems drowned in her imagination. In the middle, Frida shows us her inner emotional tournament that she was experiencing by herself. It's like a reflection of her sad life.

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Blade Runner

We've seen Blade Runner movie in our 11th week. It was a quite interesting film. The movie shows us the year 2020. Flying cars, gigantic glowy billboards showing smiling Japanese girls drinking Coca-Cola it's looks like Tokyo but the story happens in Los Angeles. At the beginning of the movie these elements cause excitement. Harrison Ford as Rick Deckard and he is a cop very brave and confident one. Also there are 'replicants' which are artificial people or robots we can say and they look like human. Anyway Ford has a difficult task which is track the replicant and eliminate them. Because they escaped from off-world and they are trying to inflict themselves on earth. Of course like in every movie Ford falls in love with one of the replicants. The reason why people don't like replicants is replicants were outlawed on Earth after a few instances of replicants attacking humans.and the action starts but at the end of the film there is something that preoccupies me which is is Deckard a replicant? Because in the last scenes, Rachael asks Deckard if he's taken his own test to see if he's a replicant, and he uncomfortably ignores her. Throughout the film, replicants are seen sometimes to have glowing, reflective pupils, which Deckard himself is seen to have as well. Also there was another scene. He always sees the same dream, a running unicorn in the woods. And the Gaff, a veteran blade runner, even if Ford doesn't tell anything about his dream, Gaff seems like he knows more than he knows.

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Multimedia

In our 13th week, we learned about multimedia. What defines multimedia is using more than one medium of expression or communication. There are different forms of multimedia:                                                                                -World Wide Web                                                                                                     -CD                                                                                                                        -Virtual reality games                                                                                              -Interactive installations, etc.                                                        

Multimedia appeals to all the senses simultaneously, inter-disciplinary, composes extreme states of subjective experience (which let you work with the artist and artwork)

There are some key concepts of multimedia;                                                          1.Integration: The combining of different media into a single (hybrid) work & the incorporation of technology into artistic practice.                              2.Interactivity: The ability of the user to manipulate or change the media/he uses.                                                                                                  3.Hypermedia: the linking of separate media elements to one another to create a trail of personal association(e.g. text leads to an image leads to sound…) 4.Immersion: the experience of entering into believable virtual environments. 5.Non-linear/multi-linear Narrative: non-linear story forms and media presentation.

Multimedia starts with the computer & it uses computer’s capability for personal expression. First computers in the history were made for calculation and used in the field of defense. Digital computers were initially designed as calculating machines. Douglas Engelbart created computer mouse, windows for text editing and electronic mail. After that Alan Kay pursued his idea for the Dynabook-a notebook-sized computer that enabled hyperlinking, was fully interactive, and integrated all media. (a hyperlink connects texts in a non-linear fashion. A hypertext is a text and a hypermedia is mixing all video typography) And after all we see the 1973 Xerox Alto;                                                                                   -the 1st personal computer                                                                                    -the idea of multiple works                                                                                     -capable of creating video                                                                                       - user-friendly

The Integration of the Arts

Alan Kay’s Dynabook which unifies all media within a single interactive interface had roots in theories of 19th-century opera composer, Richard Wagner who introduced the concept of Gesamtkunstwerk Total Artwork. It is the integration of all the arts: unifying music, song, dance, poetry, visual arts, & stagecraft to embrace the full range of human experience. And in 1916 with The Italian Futurist artist F.T. Marinetti, Film is the supreme art. Because film embraced all other forms of art, resulting in a “totalizing” effect on human consciousness. After, the American composer John Cage wrote pieces that included audience participation. It was a breakdown of traditional boundaries between artistic disciplines in the late 1940s. He counted the majors. Every time he did the shows differently. Artists became increasingly interested in integrating technology into their work. Bell Labs (scientist) and Billy Klüver (powerful engineer), introduced equal collaboration between artist & engineer with integrating electronic media into artworks.

Through the Looking Glass

We all have that fantasy taken from where you are and transported into another world. With computer-based multimedia, virtual worlds will soon become commonplace. There are mnemonic virtual environments of the earliest known form of human expression, the prehistoric cave paintings. One found in Lascaux, France from 15,000 BC, theaters for performance of rituals engaged all the senses. As well as paintings the immersive environments are also important. Immersive means; to become completely involved in something. There are many examples of immersion in the history of art like this one. From Greece, the Greek theatres and the great cathedrals of Europe are two obvious examples. Richard Wagner designed an opera house (in Germany) “to immerse the audience in the performance.” The late 1970s: “Architecture Machine Group” at MIT created “media room” where objects on a screen could be moved around by pointing and talking. In 1980′s, Scott Fisher of the NASA-Ames Research Center created VIEW (Virtual Interface Environment Workstation) that placed users in virtual environments. With time immersive environments and interactive installations showed an increase in many fields. 

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Rear Window

We’ve watched the Alfred Hitchcock's  Rear Window movie in this week. At the beginning of the movie I was like ‘’Is it going like this?’’ It was a bit boring. As a summary, we see James Stewart as a photographer whose name is Jeff and his leg is broken so he has to stay at home all the time for a while and we see Grace Kelly as his girlfriend. Because his leg is broken and he is trapped in a wheelchair, he starts to spies on his neighbors with a binocular. All night long and day long he watches his neighbors actually he is like a voyeur. We know that it’s wrong but aren’t we always voyeurs when we go to the movies? Or there are times for sure that we caught ourselves when watching other people while they don’t look. In this film to some extent, it’s going with Jeff’s voyeurism but when his neighbor Thorwald looks back at Jeffries window, it ends. Jeffry believes that one of his neighbors committed a murder and he believes that that person is Thorwald.

Apart from the film’s content, when we look at the studio this was the first time a director created a huge studio for a movie. We see an apartment complex is an artistic microcosm . We see all of the characters.                                          The composer&Miss Torso: performing arts                                                          The sculpturess : Plastic art                                                                                    Thorwald : Murder Mystery                                                                                      The couple with dog : Domestic comedy          

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Film as an Art

In our 11th week, we’ve seen the Film and Television. At the beginning of the invention of the cinema, people didn’t pay attention to it, they thought that this is another technological invention like photography. Just like in photography people believed that cinema opposes creativity. In a short time, this idea has changed and cinema became as a one of the major art form by the middle of the century. 

FILM

1)The 1st movie show was ‘’Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat’’ by the Lumière Brothers, 1895. It is a 1st realistic documentary.                                            2)Also, there is a ‘’A Trip to the Moon’’ by George Méliès, 1902. It’s the first sci-fi movie, a fantastic movie.

3)Origins of the conception of the cinema come from Plato’s Cave Allegory: prisoners, with their backs to a source of light, watch shadows on a cave wall and mistake them for real.                                                                                      4)Shadow Play, we all know Karagöz&Hacivat. What shadow play is we see moving shadows on a white curtain.

Secondary and Primary Identification; Secondary identification is we relate ourselves with the character. We identify characters and the events. Primary identification is about relating yourself to the camera this time, not with the character. The camera creates a constructed reality.

Watching a film is like a dream right? We see characters or places we would like to be. And we watch it in a dark environment.

We all like to go cinema right, why? There is A Psychoanalytical Explanation for this;                                                                                                                          Scopophilia: We drive to look at. For example, you’re sitting with your friend and a message came to her/his phone. We drive to look at the phone screen involuntarily, it’s like a reflex.                                                                                    Voyeurism: It’s a looking/watching people when they don’t know they’re being watched. Looking = Power    Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window movie would be a good example of voyeurism.

TELEVISION

Like today, at that time television is a massive communication device for people. When technology was invented in 1909, in  1939 BBC began TV broadcasting. And in 1968 Turkey started to broadcast with TRT channel. Like cinema, television is also addressing the mass audience. We see moving images in both. But there are also some differences like; television is smaller in size and we can watch it when we want(always) in our houses. In spite of that cinema has particular sessions of films, we cannot watch when we want. Also, we have to watch it in a movie theatre with other people but ‘’individually’’ because we cannot talk during the movie. Or we can watch television both daytime and night under the light, it can be a daily activity, it doesn’t interrupt us while reading or talking, but in cinema, we have to watch the films in the dark and we cannot do anything while watching it. Furthermore, when we look at the images that display in the television and movie we see a huge difference between. The movie images are more memorable, mythical and more quality, but in television, images are trivial, repetitive and superficial.                                                          In economics way, cinema has tickets and commercials and tv has commercials.(Tv sells our time to advertisers.)                                                      About addressing and unity, television addresses to us, the audiences, the viewers in a direct way, like in News ‘’Dear Viewers’’.                                            Also, we see like dozens of tv series like ‘’Arka Sokaklar’’, it still continuing and I think it’s been like 475 episodes. Tv Series is usually never-ending, open, repetitive TV narratives. The thing is to continue the story as long as possible.

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Photography

In this week (week 10), we’ve seen subjects like the invention of photography, the camera obscura, Baroque Pictorial Vision and other stuff,  under the photography topic. In every field of art, photography has something distinctive from other art areas. Yes, you can draw, you can remember but not the same as you remember. We can’t draw something %100 true or we can’t remember a memory in every aspect even if we could, maybe someone who shared this memory with us may remember the event quite differently. But photographs can show the truth unarguably. Photography came because of a need. From the Renaissance, the development of photography has many dramatic changes with Western perception.

-As you know Renaissance artists did not use perspective methods to document retinal vision. Rather they organized picture space in an orderly and rational way. For example Emmanuel de Witte’s ‘’Protestant Gente Church’’, there is no symmetry, also we do not see the whole composition but just a part of it and the viewer is not the center of the subject, it’s a painting that has made with a photographic vision. The sketches of Renaissance artists were usually monochrome, rendered in pencil or ink. In the 17th century, artists began to use oil paint for outdoor sketching. 

public paintings               private sketches                                                              (created by intellect)   /  (inspired by the eye it’s spontaneous.)

-The Camera Obscura,  (“dark room”) had been known since the Ancient Egyptians (2,500 years ago). Certain artists like Jan Vermeer used camera obscura as a drawing aid. At the end of the 18th century, there was another popular drawing aid which called camera lucida, which means ‘’light chamber’’.

-Also, there are some kind of types of photography;                                            1) As Entertainment: 19th c. stereoscopes used two pictures taken several centimeters apart. When viewed together, the image would appear to be three-dimensional. *The magic lantern is the 1st projection that people can make animations.                                                                                                              2) Photojournalism: Events and places became the subjects of endless documentation. In the 19th-century people had wish to see things as they are so this matched with that wish.                                                                              3) Scientific Interests: In the meantime, exposure time became shorter and shorter, the camera showed that it can see that a human eye cannot see. For this reason, it was initially embraced by scientists in the 19th century. For example ‘’Galloping Horse’’ or ‘’Animal locomotion’’.    

By the way,  George Eastman invented the Kodak Camera, in 1888. It was so affordable that photography became a medium category people thing.  

How about photography and perception?                                                            The process of seeing an image happens in the same way for everyone. But people from different cultures will often disagree about what they see, and even those in the same culture can often disagree about the meaning of what they see. For example in Western societies and cultures, people see photography as truth, reality and objective. Photography changes the world that we live in. It does not only help shape the way we see things but it also helps to change our thoughts about the world.

Photography and Art, 19th-20th-century Western culture has maintained certain Romantic ideas about what an artist is. The use of mechanical devices damages the purity of art. As a response, many early photographers created photographs that imitated fine artworks. To achieve the ‘’artistic’’ effect, photographers manipulated the negatives, painted over the print, or combined several negatives in print.

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Postmodernism in Culture and Arts

It showed up after modernism. Postmodernism is a cultural period/attitude and a critical response to Modernism’s basic features. It is first used in Architecture. In postmodern architecture, modern and traditional elements used together and it challenges functionalism&rationalism. Postmodernity continues to focus on science, technology, and progress. They don’t reject modernity totally but take some parts. 

Features of Postmodern Culture&Society,

-Consumerism, consumption of unnecessary items                                               -Multinational, economy is directed by them.                                                        -Electric and nuclear energy                                                                                  -Computers                                                                                                            -Simulation, imitation with no distinction between true and false                          -Pastiche, imitation of past cultural styles                                                              -Time-Space compression, distances shorten via technology                              -Globalization, connection interconnectivity increasing the flow of money, people images                                                                                                         -Megapolis, megacities all over the world. New York, İstanbul...                          -Cultural fragmentation and pluralism                                                                  -Viral diseases                                                                                                        -New social movements

Simulacra are copies that depict things that either had no reality to begin with or that no longer have an original

Modernism vs Postmodernism

Modernism, they reject plural styles(new machine style or no style)              broke with the past, history, and tradition.                                                            an aesthetic ideology 1920 ct.                                                                    rejected ornament and decoration, national and local                              improving humanity

Postmodernism(by the 1960′s), history and tradition important                      both a continuation/rejection of modernism                                                    retro styles, quotation, parodies, and pastiche                                               many styles together=favoreed ‘’pluralism’’            

*a system of values which style and image predominate

Postmodern Person, someone who will not be fooled by techniques of propaganda and illusionism

-The layering of references                                                                                     -fragmented                                                                                                            -pluralistic                                                                                                               -multifaced

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Art in the Age of Mass Media

This week(6th week) we ‘ve seen three possible attitudes on the part of fine artists towards mass media/culture can be distinguished; negative, positive and mixed.

Negative responses can be; direct(obvious) or implied. For example, the bronze sculpture ‘’Fuck the Media’’ made by Michael Sandle. His sculpture is an example of outright rejection.

Pop Art(60s-70s), A mixed response to mass culture,                                          -Celebrates consumers products                                                                           -or show a critical response

Subjects of Pop Art:                                                                                              -The modern city (not nature)                                                                                 -Man-made buildings, motorways, newspapers, magazines, televisions...           -Popular culture/mass media

Pop art was made by high skilled specialists.

Hierarchical Pyramid, High Culture is fine arts and the Low Culture is popular art.

Pop art today, is an art movement that uses popular/mass culture items in artworks.(tv, adv.,movies) and done by professional artists. Its major centers are New York and London. Pioneers of Pop Art, Richard Hamilton, Eduardo Paolozzi and Andy Warhol.

Pop art translates mass culture into art. Contents are women(housewife) and domestic appliances. In American advertisements where women were; sexual image and a styling accessory. In some of Richard Hamilton’s examples, the sexuality of the woman’s body, the similarity between metal and flesh and smooth forms/glamorous materials of the products.

An important info: Pop Artists belong to ‘’fine art’’, not mass culture

American Pop Art

Abstract Expressionism, emotional, moral, committed, autographic, serious, personal, spontaneous...                                                                                          Pop Art, unemotional, amoral, ironic, systematic, carefully thought, nonautographic, nonpersonal...      Their values are the same as capital.

For example, Roy Lichtenstein's ‘Little Big Painting’  1965, Subject is, detail of brushwork from an ‘action painting’ enlarged. The irony, look mechanically produced even though it is made by hand. Criticising the ‘’abstract expressionism’’. Another example is ‘Whaami’,1963. Its actually a war scene, but the artist made it in a different way so we can look at it easily. In American Pop Art, works were very big size, the feeling of pure ambiguity, the ability to look into American’s commercial culture and inspired by American lifestyle. Also, it has roots in Dada and Cubism using everyday life. For example, Salvador Dali’s, ‘Mao/Marilyn’, 1971. It's a Dada work, it shows the similarity between propaganda of the Chinese communist party(Chairman Mao). We see Marilyns’ face on the Maos’. Mao and propaganda of capitalist mass media(Marilyn Monroe). Another example is from Andy Warhol. Campbells Soup, it's an everyday object. Also, there is Claes Oldenburg, he uses over-scale in his artworks. He uses everyday objects, inappropriate materials. He accepts the American lifestyle.

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Creating Art

(5th week)

Who is a Genius? Is it a natural gift or it’s a talent that we developed thanks to privilege? When we think about geniuses we always remember man names. But there are also women you know, we just don’t know their names. When someone asks you which geniuses you know, you automatically say; Picasso, Beethoven, Einstein or Shakespeare. But is there any women genius that comes to your mind? No. But there are, for example; Marie Curie, Ada Lovelace or Martha Stewart. 

Of course, there have been women artists, but they have been conveniently forgotten or marginalized in art history. Because of the history made by men, some of the women couldn’t benefit from the privileges of art. The ability to do something, to achieve something, rule, invent or create is about that he or she has right to do it and they must have believed in his or her ability and the most importantly there must be access to the areas of achievement and power. Until today, people believed that these privileges only for men. Still, some believe that.

Women were always referred to in terms of a man; The wife of..., the daughter of..., the sister of... or the mother of... 

Women in the history of art were objects of desire and the objects of the male gaze. For example; Titian, Venus of Urbina(1538)

Art history has been written with the assumption that the artists were men.

During the 19th century, women were not permitted to work with any nude model, male or female.

*In the 1980′s, many women artist began to challenge the ‘privilege’ of creating art, that it has been a male-dominated. Many of the women artists chose to use photography to challenge with male-dominations. For example, from Barbara Kruger, ‘’We won’t play nature to your culture’’.

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SURREALISM, MYTH, AND PSYCHOANALYSIS

It's actually a cultural/artistic movement that was expressed through art, literature, and even politics. Founded in 1924 by Andre Breton (poet/critic). It was primarily in Europe, in Paris. Also, in this week we have seen Salvador Dali’s first surrealist film. It was very odd, had no order and had no story. We’ve seen very disturbing scenes, for example, one of them was showing an eye cutting by a knife or the scene with ants. It was completely illogical, seeing a different very different type of film was unusual.  Surrealism is a heterogeneous art movement, with no stylistic unity and use the difference to generate meaning. 

Techniques (aim) of Surrealism;

-to shock viewer

-to confuse normal expectations

-to speak from the position of the irrational, the unconscious/madness

Joan Miró, Peinture, 1927, This painting has an open ending story, what we see could be a dog, a hand or something different.

Salvador Dalis’ Les Accommodations des desirs ( Accommodations of Desires), 1929. Figurative, enigmatic and illogical.

-Meret Oppenheim, Object: Fur Breakfast, 1936. An icon of surrealism symbol. Refusing utility and rationality. Connected with the industrial revolution, women, live in architecture.

Man Ray,  Erotique Voilée, 1933. Fantasy life of Surrealist: erotic, industrial and rational. The unconscious repressed, the underside of modernity.

‘‘By creating art we reach our desires.’‘

Freud and the Unconscious

 Sigmund Freud was the former founder of psychoanalysis, is accepted as a great modern thinker.  Psychoanalytic Theory, the conscious, thoughts of which we are aware unconscious. Example; Max Ernst, Oedipus, 1933, an unconscious sexual desire (to his mother), for ones mother’s combined with father’s hatred. Nature of unconscious, sexual instinct maternal. 

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Modernism

This week we’ve learned about modernism and how to define it. Also, there are several approaches to define modernism which are the reductionist approach, historical and sociological approach and perceived crisis of unified responses. In the first one (reductionist approach); reduces everything to its key features or common traits. Discontinuity, nihilism, intellectuality and a feeling of alienation and loneliness. The second one (historical and sociological approach); explains modernism as the outcome of historical&sociological contexts. As a precursor of Postmodernism, as a continuation of or in contrast with Romanticism and as a reaction, in its extreme avant-garde forms, against aestheticism. The third one is the perceived crisis of unified responses. Modernism not as a single&unified response but as a range of responses of the artists to a perceived crisis.

The second topic about last week was ‘’disillusionment’’. Reasons of disillusionment;

Changing Sense of Reality, The Changing Sense of Human Nature and  The Changing Understanding of The Relationship Between Man and Reality.

Also, I want to talk about MODERNISM AS RESPONSE.

We’ve talked about the artists’ responses to the crisis of Modernism and Modernism in art, each one had different approaches to this crisis. And if we have to categorize these responses, we can see at least six different types to this crisis;

1) Nihilist: The belief that (with past) nothing has meaning or value. For example, Nietzche went insane and Van Gogh killed himself.

2) Decadents: Drugs, alcohol&violent experience. Oscar Kokoschka expelled from the school because his works of art that time was considered as extremely violent&distractive.

3) Aesthetics: Treatment of art as something autonomous, a-historical and removed from the realm of rationalization (irrational-self ruling, independent).  Declared the holly nature of art to reach unity. Art for art’s sake movement, symbolists,....... Edward Munch, The Scream (1893), Symbolist movement.

4) Escape into Past: A tendency towards Primitivism. Paul Gaugin (Tahiti), primitive art, symbolism, he isolated himself to be free. Marc Chagall, cubism, ‘’I and the Village’’. Paul Klee, cubist.

5)Escape into the Future: A tendency to withdraw or transcend the modern civilization by several means. The Futurists; speed, energy, size of modern society and its ability to destroy the conventions. Umberto Boccioni and Carlo Carta. The Vorticists: The celebration of machine world, the city and material energy and most shamefully to fascism, they later moved towards less abstract and more humane modes of art. Wyndham Lewis and William Roberts.

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Different types of artists in the society

In our second week, we dwelled on ‘The Function of Artists in Society’ and we saw that artists have different roles in their society.

First of all, we have ‘The Skilled Worker’. These artists are trained in a manual skill, does a specific, narrowly defined job, or solves a problem (physical and technical problems). 

Secondly, the artists as Intellectual. They are the inventors and discoverers as artists. The Intellectual artists are the educators of humanity. They originated in High Renaissance and known as researchers. For example; Michelangelo, Leonardo, Raphael, and Dürer.

‘The Entrepreneur’. These artists are free from the patronage of the church&monarchy. Their art style addresses to people’s demands and market and they make money by selling their artworks. They are known as business people. For example; Andy Warhol and Picasso.

And here, ‘The social critic artists’ in this period, art is a tool against injustice, a way to transform the world. They are known as revolutionary or activists. For instance; Banksy, Barbara Kruger.

Lastly, The Social Healers;  they believe that their work can state transcendent truths for social healing. They act like priests, social healers, and psychologists. In this situation, they have an important function as leaders in social, political and religious rituals.

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Art and Culture ll

In our first week, we watched a video about modern art. In this video we’re looking at modern art by themes which are Places&Spaces, Art&Identity, Transforming Everyday Objects and Art&Society. I’ll move on giving one example for each;

1) Places&Spaces

The Starry Night

Vincent van Gogh

(Dutch, 1853–1890)

In 1889, St.Paul hospital became home to Vincent van Gogh. While he was in the hospital he made some paintings. He painted his doctor, his hallway and his ward. But he was obsessed with the night sky. He observed everything around the hospital; trees, houses, sky... As a result, this painting became the most famous modern landscape painting in the history of modern landscapes.

2)  Art&Identity

Self-Portrait with Cropped Hair

Frida Kahlo

1940

She did this painting after divorced her husband. Her art had always been in response to her life. Her life shaped her art.

3) Transforming Everyday Objects

Art is handmade by the artist. Artists have taken raw materials and they created masterpieces.

Object

Meret Oppenheim

Paris, 1936 

This Surrealist object was inspired by a conversation between Oppenheim and artists Pablo Picasso and Dora Maar at a Paris cafe. Artists like Duchamp and Meret Oppenheim brings a new perspective to art.

4) Art&Society

Migrant Mother

Dorothea Lange

1936

During the Great Depression, a photographer Dorothea Lange decided to travel California up and down. She was documenting the lives of the immigrant workers. While she was her return path something prevented her from her way. She saw and approached a hungry and desperate mother and she took this picture at a migrant farmworkers' camp near Nipomo, California. It published and it connected with people.