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Au Weiwei

Weiwei was born on the 28th August 1957 in China. He grew up in the far north west where he lived under cruel conditions because of his fathers exile. Weiwei studied at the Beijing Film Academy where he was educated in Animation. From 1981 to 1993, Weiwei lived in the USA, where he studied English at the University of Pennsylvania and the University of California. Later on, he moved to NYC. He joined the Art Students League of New York from 1983 to 1886. Weiwei’s work combines his political stances with his personal poetry. His work comments on political corruption - with a main focus on China.

Barbra Hepworth

Barbra Hepworth was a British artist and sculptor. She lived from the 10th of January 1903 - 20th May 1975. She studied at the Leeds School of Art from 1920 until she received a scholarship to study at the Royal College of Art in London from 1921 until 1924. Hepworth’s work is the epitome of modernism and in particular, modern sculpture. Hepworth’s work abstracts the organic shapes already found in materials and has underlying themes of nature.

Comparison

Weiwei and Hepworth have very different concepts behind their work. Weiwei explores political corruption and human right breeches in the world - but more specifically in authoritarian states. Whereas Hepworth explores nature and the organic state. The concepts behind their work reflect on the outside, with many of Weiwei’s work being grand in size and quite imposing, whereas Hepworth’s work co soars of organic shapes and is quite soothing to the eye. Another difference is the type of sculpture they they produce. Weiwei jumps from sculpture to sculpture, with few looking similar. the scale and subject matter changes frequently in his work. Whereas Hepworth has a continuity throughout her work making her work distinct and very recognisable. A similarity between Weiwei and Hepworth’s work is that they both use limited colour or neutral colours. Weiwei’s work is usually silver metal of black which makes it very impressive to the viewer. Hepworth used natural colours like white and beige which makes her work softer on the eye which coincides well with the organic shapes used.

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Artist Comparison

Hannah Hoch

Hannah Hoch was born on the 1st November 1889 in Germany, who’s most recognisable work is from the Weimar period. Hoch was a pioneer in her work with photomontage and was part of the Dada movement. Hock studied at the Berlin College of arts and Crafts and The School of the Royal Museum of Applied Arts. Hock aimed to demolish the division that stemmed from the concept of the ‘New Woman’ in Weimar Germany, who was androgynous, ambitious and set to become an equal to her male counterpart. Other themes weaved into Hoch’s work are gender roles and political discourse. This created a feminist colloquy around Hock’s work.

Robert Rauschenberg

Robert Rauschenberg was born on the 22nd October 1925 in Texas, USA. He studied at the Kansas City Art Institute, the Academie Julian Black Mountain College and the Art Students League of New York. He was part of the Neo-Dada and Abstract Expressionism movements. Rauschenberg wanted to work in the space between life and art - in a way which represents both simultaneously. Much like many of Rauschenberg’s Dada predecessors, he questioned the difference between every day objects and art objects. One of Rauschenberg’s most recognisable pieces of work, Canyon, is a combination painting which feature elements such as newspaper, photographic images and taxidermy.

Comparison 

A difference between Hoch and Rauschenberg’s work is the subject matter. Hoch’s work features humans and human features to a great extent. Rauschenberg on the other hand focuses more on shape, colour and words. Another difference between Hock and Rauschenberg’s work is composition. The majority of Hock’s mixed media work is photomontage, where she took two or more photos and manipulated them into a composite photo, whereas, Rauschenberg’s mixed media work is more collage like - in the way that he compiled an assortment of images, text and designs to show his idea or concept. A final difference between Hock and Rauschenberg’s work is their colour palette. Hoch used a limited colour palette on her work, usually with one predominant colour and perhaps a hint of a harmonious colour combined with a black and white image. Whereas, Rauschenberg  uses harsh contrasts of cool and warm colours which instantly catches the eye of the viewer.

Hannah Höch

Robert Rauschenberg

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Jenny Saville

PAINTER

Jenny Saville was born on the 7th of May 1970 in Cambridgeshire. She studied at Glasgow school of art for further education. Subsequently she received a six month scholarship at the University of Cincinnati where she enrolled in a women’s studies course. This implanted ideas of gender politics into her thoughts, where it manifested in the majority of her body of work. 

Saville paints the female body exclusively. She is interested in bodies in a state of in-betweenness, therefore, she spent many hours observing plastic surgery procedures in NYC to gather imagery to use in her paintings. Saville paints in scales much larger than life-size. Which manages to grip the attention of the viewer arguably more than if it was true to scale. This also means that there is more room for detail, of which Saville excels in. She uses precise brushstrokes and patches of oil colour of which are highly pigmented which gives a very sensory effect. Saville also uses muted, natural colours in her paintings to give a soft atmosphere, to which she can paint many different subjects on.

 Saville’s work explores the ideas of defying beauty standards. She paints bodies that are not traditionally represented by the media and makes them as bold and pronounced as possible. Saville also explores what the words ‘beautiful’ and ‘feminine’  mean by using ‘disgust’ and distortion to make the paintings as memorable as possible provokes makes a profound reaction from the viewer.

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Comparison

EUAN UGLOW AND PETER DOIG

Euan Uglow was a British painter who’s is most known for his still life and nude paintings. Uglow was born in London on the 10th March 1932. For further education, he studied at the Camberwell School of Art, then moved to the Slade School of Art as one of his most influential tutors left Camberwell to teach at Slade. Uglow is well known for his diligent approach to painting, measuring and correcting pedantically. This was very time consuming and became a long-running joke between him and his peers. Through painting in this way, Uglow achieves a sculptural feel lo his work. Uglow worked directly from life, whether it be human or still. This heightened the sculptural feel to the paintings. Through working meticulously, measurements and marks were left on the painting, which Uglow consciously decided to keep to give the work a raw feel. He preferred to work with canvasses of exact measurements, such as a square or a golden rectangle. This gave the paintings the needed contrast of the unrefined paintwork with remnants of measurements with a clean and precise base.

Peter Doig was born in Edinburgh on the 17th April 1959. He moved to Trinidad with his family in 1962, then on to Canada in 1966. For further education, Doig moved back to the UK to study at the Wimbledon School of Art in London from 1979-80, then Central St Martins from 1980-83 and lastly the Chelsea School of Art from 1989-90 where he received an MA. Doig mostly paints landscapes in an abstract style, many of which extracting elements of his childhood in Canada. He takes inspiration from movie scenes, photographs, newspaper scraps and record album covers. His landscapes are formed conceptually and uses inspiration photos purely for reference as they are not painted in a photorealistic style. Adding to his abstract style, Doig has expressed that his paintings “make no attempt to reflect setting” making for a mysterious and almost dream-like feel.

Uglow and Doig are quite contrasting artists. Firstly, their styles are very different. Uglow has a realistic, sculptural style whereas Doig’s work is very abstract. This gives Uglow’s work a warmth as it is familiar to the viewer. However, this does not make Doig’s work cold. In fact, his paintings are very dreamlike, which brings warmth to the work unlike other abstract paintings. Secondly, the subject matter that Uglow and Doig paint are extremely different. Uglow mostly paints human figures in contrast to Doig who paints conceptual landscapes. Uglow’s pieces are very emotive which is due to the human figure and how he has instructed the model to pose. This is as there is an intrinsic vunerability to the human figure and the fact that the human figure can embody so many emotions. Doig’s work being of scenes that do not exist, yet look familiar enough to the point that they could exist exude a mysterious feel and leave it to the viewer to find out more for themselves.

Euan Uglow

Peter Doig

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Christian Marclay

COMPOSER AND VISUAL ARTIST

Christian Marclay was born in California on the 11th January 1955 to a Swiss father and American mother, meaning Marclay spent the majority of his childhood in Switzerland. He4 started further education in Geneva at the Ecole Superieure d’Art Visuel. For the last three years of his education he studied in the USA at the Massachusetts College of Art and then at the Cooper Union in NYC. Whilst studying, Marclay had a notable adoration of Joseph Beuys’ work and was interested in the Fluxus movement of the 1960’s and 70’s.

ANALYSIS OF PRACTICE

Marclay is a visionary for using a turntable to create soundscapes. He intentionally damages records to use the skipping produced as a percussion instrument. To further that skipping effect, Marclay cuts and rejoins records which subsequently produces clicks and pops from the seams of the record. More recently, Marclay has been producing visual art with close links to sound. For example, Graffiti Composition from 2002, where he placed musical notes around Berlin and collated photos of them as they faded.

DEFINITIONS OF THE TECHNIQUES

Skipping A Record - Where the needle of a record player skips across the grooves in your record, making the music jump and creating a distinct ‘scratching’ sound, most recognisable in hip-hop and electronic music such as trip-hop and techno.

CONTEXT

One of Marclay’s most well renowned works is The Clock. It is a 24 hour compendium of time related scenes in movies. It debuted at the White Cube in London in 2010. Marclay regards it as a memento mori, a reminder of the inevitability of death. It is a stark contrast to the escapism of cinema as it draws the viewers attention towards the amount of time they have taken watching it. Another aspect of the artwork that compounds this idea is that  it actually functions as a clock with the time being shown in a scene being synchronised with the local time.

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Martin Parr

Martin Parr was born in Surrey on the 23rd May 1952. He showed interest in photography during his adolescence being inspired by his grandfather who was an amateur photographer and member of the Royal Photographic Society. Parr acted on his interest by going to study Photography at Manchester Polytechnic, where he worked with fellow documentarian Daniel Meadows. Parr’s most recognisable work was curated almost a decade after he left Manchester Polytechnic in 1982, where he started the project titled; The Last Resort. This was the start of a nearly twenty year social and cultural documentation  containing four separate bodies of work, which distinguished Parr as a photographer.

ARTIST’S PRACTICE

Martin Parr uses a macro lens in his work, making it closer up to the subject and with that creating a more personal feel. Parr also uses flash in the daylight, which makes the colour in the photograph more saturated. It has been said that these techniques put the subject “Under the microscope” and makes you sit and decipher how the photo makes you feel.

TECHNIQUES

Rule of Thirds - Rule of thirds is a compositional structure where you split an image three times vertically and three times horizontally. If the main subject matter has been captured using the rule of thirds, it draws the viewers eye in as it is off centre and in many cases more interesting to look at as it is more complex than the main feature being right in the centre of the photo. 

Using Flash Outdoors - Using flash outside in Parr’s case has brought in more detail to his work. Using flash in this way creates more depth as it is a mixture of natural light and artificial condensed light, the latter bounces off of many surfaces that wouldn’t be highlighted if soley natural lighting was used. This in turn brings out many details in the subject of the photo.

CONTEXT

Parr’s work exquisitely documents human nature, particularly how the political landscape affects human nature. His work is politically charged which is unusual for a photographer documenting day-to-day happenings of ordinary people. He manages to show the direct and indirect impact of government legislation on citizens, which is hard to see when you are so accustomed to your way of living. Parr being an outsider and not knowing these people personally made it easier for him to create a social comment on their situations. His work is particularly politically charged because of the time they were taken. His most recognisable work is from the time of Thatcher to the arrival of new labour and Tony Blair in the mid to late 1990’s. This political unrest being in the backdrop of the photos adds to the political and cultural ammunition behind them.