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Bizet-Carmen and Cartoons

Classical music is art music produced or rooted in the traditions of Western culture, including both liturgical (religious) and secular music. The most common composers’ compositions became famous many years later after they died. Lots of people think that they have thousands or millions of classical music but in fact, there are just a few compositions in the world. Others just arose from the originals.

Classical music is most commonly used in Cartoons. The theme is usually seen at the Bugs Bunny and Tom & Jerry. Classical music helps to understand the cartoon, the instruments create a mood swing on the audience. Instead of using just sound or dialogues, cartoon makers prefer classical music. Their purpose is entertainment. The Interesting part of the cartoons is most of the people recognize classic music from cartoons. The music is using at the openings, middle, even endings. It fits perfectly every second of the cartoon. Warner Bros. Looney Tunes and Tom and Jerry etc. did a great job in order to adapt classic music into modern time. 

Bizet’s Carmen is one of them. Carmen is an opera in four acts by French composer Georges Bizet. It is using in Tom&Jerry cartoon and even there is a film called Carmen Get It! It is an animated short film released in 1962. 

This can be only an example that the producer how perfectly integrate classical music into our lives.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_music

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carmen

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Key in photography

In photography, to create mood one of the subjects is key. Key is the element of a certain mood. It has two main types that are high-key and low-key. These types of lightning change the atmosphere of the photograph. First thing is high-key. It has very low contrast and few shadows in photography. This is using in sitcoms, romantic comedies etc. Because of the less shadow, actors can walk or look from different camera angles. 

With the high-key, there is not a dark theme and most of the tones become whiter. Most of the time it uses to create a happy, positive feeling. 

Another type is low key which is opposite of the high-key. It contains a very high contrast and dark theme. In low-key, a shadow is using as the main subject. Although there are some shadows, a photograph has bright parts. The bright part emphasizes the specific parts and the parts can easily draw attention. This type of lightning uses for giving a dark theme or dramatic feeling. 

It is also using in romantic scenes. Also, mostly we did not see the full body of the subject.

https://blog.pond5.com/7776-lighting-for-a-mood-making-the-most-of-key-color-and-contrast/

https://contrastly.com/understanding-the-basics-of-high-key-vs-low-key-lighting/

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Roy Lichtenstein

Originally his name is  Roy Fox Lichtenstein and he was born on October 27, 1923. He passed away on September 29, 1997. He was an American pop artist.  The 1960s, he was a figure for the new art movement. He said that pop art is not an ‘American’ painting but actually industrial painting. He has a popular work like Whaam!

It is one of the well-known works of pop art culture and his most important paintings. He was studying art before he was serving as a soldier in the United States Army during World War II. This work is part of a series on the war that he served on between 1962 and 1964. Another painting that he has is As I Opened Fire.

This is a 1964 oil and magna on canvas painting and a triptych with verbal continuity. He shows his paintings to look mechanical and he chose teen and action comics subjects. His general message through his works is the gunfire. Whaam! and As I Opened Fire are dramatic war-comic works of him.  As I Opened Fire is more abstract compared to the Whaam! Another of his famous work is that Oh, Jeff...I Love You, Too...But... 

This is again a 1964 oil and magna on canvas painting of him. His many works he likes using speech balloons. This is his early romance comic derivative works.

Drowning Girl is one of his most influential works of him. This is a 1963 painting in oil and synthetic polymer paint on canvas. This is the most representative paintings of the pop art culture. 

Overall, His impact on pop art and his method of creating paintings which he was interested in the abstract qualities of the images that intended to look like mechanical reproduction and drawing by him by hand. He became central to an understanding of  Pop Art.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/As_I_Opened_Fire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whaam! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roy_Lichtenstein https://lichtensteinfoundation.org/biography/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drowning_Girl https://www.theartstory.org/artist-lichtenstein-roy.htm

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Martin Schoeller's Close-up

  Close up or close-up technique in filmmaking or still photography is a type of shooting technique that frames a person’s face or an object. The technique is one of the usual shots uses with medium and long shots in cinematic techniques. The reason why the technique is using is that close up demonstrates the most detail scenes. This is a typical type of zooming. There are too many close up types like medium close up, close up and vise verse. Martin Schoeller uses extreme close up technique which is the shot is so close that only detail of a subject can be seen. Martin Schoeller is a German-born American photographer who born in 1968. He has an award-winning for extreme- close up portraits. His main focus to show unfamiliar detail of complexity of a face. He shot actors, politicians, musicians, even unknowns.

   Los Angeles’ Homeless People

 He is using this technique to show the differences in human faces. Every face has unique details, for his perspective “ Face becomes topography, an undulating landscape of hills, valleys, crevasses and plains marked by pores, hair and skin textures. Schoeller uses his close up technique as a way of leveling the differences between individuals.” 

Barack Obama, 2004 by Martin Schoeller

  The photograph of Barack Obama, he has no differences than a man from his region. He did not use any backgrounds so that there are no clues about their social status. 

'They inspired me to take a series of pictures, to build a platform that allows you to compare. The pictures in my Close Up series have all been taken from similar angles and with the same equipment, but here I have tried to bring out personality and capture individuality in a search for a flash of vulnerability and integrity.'

- Martin Schoeller

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LA JETÉE

The film la jetée is a science-fiction movie and this film is an inspiration for 12 Monkeys by Terry Gilliam. 12 Monkeys is about sending back to the past to save people from virus and la jetée has a similar subject which is that after WW3 the world is a mess and scientist give him a mission to travel in time and fix it but he fails because of he fell in love with the woman who is in the past. The film’s concept is creating a film with photographs.  The film made out full of black and white photographs. The photographs’ theme usually dark and gloomy because of the war. The film is starting with an airport in Paris.

When I first start to watch the film, the movement in the first scene which is the one with the sun, I thought that it feels like a video and then it switches to the airport. Next thing is that the film continues with the voice-over and the voice summarizes the whole story. Also, by giving only photographs, the film proves that it does not have to be a video to create a film. It is possible to only use the sequence this can be a movie. This also shows the power of the photographs. The order of the photographs perfectly tells the main idea of the film’s content. Especially, when they are directly looking at the camera and the photographs, we can easily understand the feeling of the woman or man. The technique that they use called “breaking the fourth wall”.  This includes directly looking at the camera with voice and sound. So, the audience thinks that or feels like the actor directly speak with the audience. Another striking action is that the pain in the man’s face.

The passes between the photographs perfectly reflect his emotion. The usage of lights and shadows is one of the techniques that help to concentrate the giving feeling. Also, dissolve transitions, fade in and outs and long shots create a film feeling. This short and photo-roman film shows that it can be created a film by just creating movements in photographs.

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Fatboy Slim - Praise You

  When I first watched, an interesting and different style of the group can easily be seen in their video. The reaction of the people is different like some of them are watching and others just look at them and they are walking near them.

  After I researched about the video, the song Praise You by Fatboy Slim is released his second studio album ‘You’ve Come a Long Way,Baby, in 1999. Even they have a guerrilla-style video in front of a movie theatre, they reached number one on the UK Singles Chart. Their performance is called flash mob which is a group of people performs an unusual and sudden then normal acting in a public place. The video also won three major awards at the 1999 MTV Video Music Awards. 

  The unique part of the video is that they dance freely and seem like they do not have a strict choreography. The other interesting parts of the video are that they dance because they want to dance and their reckless choices of dressing. Some of them wear casual clothing, other wears a short, another has a sportive look. That is to say, their clothes are different, their styles are different and even though their ages are different but they have harmony. Harmony in irregularity. They are dancing not for people for themselves. Their happiness can be seen in the video. Even someone tried to turn off the music, they opened it up again and they continued their dance like nothing just happened. They did not care about people’s laugh or judgmental look. 

  Their motivation is very inspiring. The message that the video gave me is that you do not have to have money to create something good, you can create something cheap at the same time beautiful. You just need to love whatever you are doing.

Here is the video!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Praise_You

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Week 15- Where is the woman?

Cindy Sherman

exploration of the construction of contemporary identity and the nature of representation

 • questions the role and representation of women in society, the media and the nature of the creation of art.

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WEEK 14- Oskar Kokoschka

Our presentation topic was Oskar Kokoschka.

We presented the some information about Oskar Kokoschka’s life and then move on to Modernism, Expressionism, Decadents and finally concept of decadence.

One of the longest-lived expressionist painters, the Austrian-born painter, printmaker and writer Oskar Kokoschka was born at Pochlarn in Bohemia, and received his arts training in the Austro-Hungarian capital, Vienna. His first works - like the picture book The Dreaming Youths - were admired, and in 1908 he exhibited in the Kunstschau exhibition organized by the Klimt circle. This, together with his activity as a poet and playwright brought him into contact with the city's avant-garde art community, including the composer Schonberg. Like the other great Austrian painter, his contemporary Egon Schiele (1890-1918), Kokoschka was influenced by German and Austrian versions of Art Nouveau (see also Jugendstil as well as the Vienna Secession) but, unlike Schiele, his painting style quickly moved from Klimt-style decorative linearism to a more intense style of German Expressionism. Kokoschka is now ranked among the greatest modern artists of the Austrian school, and one of the finest expressionist portrait artists of the 20th century.

The Bride of the Wind (The Tempest) (Kunstmuseum, Basle) 

In some ways Oskar Kokoschka was typical of the early 20th century generation of German Expressionists. His painting is often characterized by apocalytic treatment of theme, and morbidity of colour, while the medium is handled in such a way as to create and enhance the required mood. However, unlike other similar artists, he worked basically within the framework of traditional Renaissance and Post-Renaissance conventions, even favouring a similar kind of scale.

There is a certain kindred spirit between Kokoschka and his contemporary the Leipzig-born Max Beckmann (1884-1950). Both maintained their own unique style of German Expressionism, by delving deeply into the art of the Old Masters, and both were masters of oil painting methods anchored in earlier traditions. Finally, both were orphaned from their homelands and artistic environments by the upheaval of war, and to some extent left standing as the world of contemporary art entered its post-war and later postmodernist phases.

Works by Oskar Kokoschka hang in many of the world's best art museums in both America and Europe

In his long career, Kokoschka was never formally part of a movement or group of artists; nevertheless, his work is most often considered as an exponent of Expressionism. His early theater work launched Expressionist theater in Europe, and his illustrations would impact graphic design. Though his work went in and out of style over the decades, Kokoschka's portraits and self-portraits, with their penetrating, psychological probing, remain his most well-known and inspiring works.

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Week 13-Digital and Multimedia

Multimedia:

The defining medium of 21st C. Concept of integrated, interactive media

‣The computer controlled integration of text, graphics, drawings, images, audio, etc

Forms of multimedia:

 ‣ World Wide Web ‣ CD-ROMs ‣ Virtual reality games ‣ Interactive installations, etc

An evolution of more than 150 years :

Multimedia: 

‣ appeals to all the senses simultaneously ‣ inter-disciplinary  ‣ composes extreme states of subjective experience. 

Extreme states of subjective experience: ‣ To increase knowledge, ‣ To transform consciousness, ‣ To enhance creativity...

‣ by individual choice ‣ free association ‣ personal expression

5 Basic Characteristics/ 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 s/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 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 presentations.

“Birth of a New Medium”

-First Mouse

THE EVOLUTION OF THE PERSONAL COMPUTER

1st computers: ‣ for calculation, ‣ used in the field of defense: ENIAC computer, during WWII by the US military, to calculate ballistic tables...

  Vannevar Bush in 1945, outlined a future device for individual use… realized: human mind operates by free association  = the notion of the hyperlink.

in 1960s, Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) supported:

Douglas Engelbart to create “on-line system”— forerunner of Internet, in 1968, he invented: ‣ computer mouse, ‣ windows for text editing ‣ & electronic mail.

A step towards interactivity

The first computer mouse (to the keyboard’s right), part of “the oNLine System” - 1968

1965: Ted Nelson devised Xanadu to share information across computer networks. 

Nelson coined the terms: 

‣hyperlink ‣hypertext ‣hypermedia 

a hyperlink connects texts in a non-linear fashion.

1965: Ivan Sutherland invented sketchpad - the first interactive graphics software. 

He theorized about the construction of believable 3-D virtual worlds using computer.

1966: Ivan Sutherland introduced headmount display

  the “Dynabook”

In 1970, Alan Kay developed the “Dynabook” - a notebook-sized computer that was fully interactive.

1973: Xerox Alto: The first true multimedia computer

1989: Tim Berners-Lee proposed an in-house on-line document sharing system that he would later call “the World Wide Web” 

By 1993 the Web or the Internet became an international phenomenon.

In 1849, Richard Wagner introduced the concept of Gesamtkunstwerk Total Artwork : 

= integration of all the arts: unifying music, song, dance, poetry, visual arts, & stagecraft to embrace full range of human experience  

The Italian Futurist artist: F.T. Marinetti: in 1916: FILM is the supreme art because it embraced all other forms of art, resulting in a “totalizing” effect.

The American composer John Cage (1912 - 1992) wrote pieces that included audience participation.

John Cage, late 1940s: organized group performances by chance operations, & indeterminacy -- lowering borders between arts

 -- inspired other artists like: – Allan Kaprow,  – Dick Higgins,  – Nam June Paik 

Then, we see the development of: nontraditional performance techniques:

-“Happening” in Grand Central Train Station New York, 1970s

Alan Kaprow invented a form of artistic performance: “The Happening” where all audiences were participants. = Blurring the distinction between Artwork & audience

(1960s-70s) Bell Labs scientist: Billy Klüver introduced equal collaboration between artist & engineer: integrating electronic media into artworks.

Klüver & others created Pepsi Pavilion at 1970 Osaka Expo, Japan: based on visitor participation

“Through the Looking Glass”

The cave paintings of Lascaux, France, 15,000 BC, theaters for performance of rituals engaged all the senses.

early example of immersion

immerse (v): to become completely involved in something

Ancient Greek theaters also attempted to “immerse” the audience in the performance . . .

Richard Wagner designed an opera house (in Germany) “to immerse the audience in the performance.”

Early 1970s: Myron Krueger designed “Metaplay” where viewers became part of the work.

Late 1970s: “Architecture Machine Group” at MIT created “media room” where objects on a screen could be moved around by pointing and talking

1980s: Scott Fisher of the NASA-Ames Research Center created VIEW (Virtual Interface Environment Workstation) that placed users in virtual environments

Immersive environments: Interactive installation:  

In 1980s, artist Jeffrey Shaw began to incorporate virtual reality into his installations.

Jeffrey Shaw’s The Legible City: (1988-1991) 

an urban textual environment buildings from words where the participant reads the texts navigating through virtual city streets 

-- a head-mounted display, & riding a stationary bicycle

In 1995, Char Davies, “Osmose”: navigating imaginary worlds through - breath & balance - movements of the participant’s body

In early 1990s, Daniel Sandin & Thomas DeFanti created CAVE: Cave Automatic Virtual Environment -- no usage of helmets or extra equipment to the body

In 1970s - 1980s, 

Kit Galloway & Sherrie Rabinowitz staged tele-performances that used satellite hookups to link distant performers. 

Kit Galloway & Sherrie Rabinowitz, “Hole in Space”, 1980 People at Lincoln Center, New York (high art) are video-linked with people in a department store (low art) in Los Angeles

The medium’s most defining element: 

Its mutability = changing nature!

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Week 12- Rear Window

has the main specific features of cinema:

A wheelchair bound photographer spies on his neighbours from his apartment window and becomes convinced one of them has committed murder.

has the main specific features of cinema:

the screen // framing

watching // looking ( scopophilia & voyeurism )

Voyeurism: • overseeing the world from a sheltered position • which gives a sense of superiority. • the desire to take people as objects, with a controlling & curious gaze.

Watching, Looking...

Binoculars & a long lens = god-like power of all-perceiving spectator.

.

When does Voyeurism END? 

• when Thorwald looks back at Jeffries “returns his gaze” • from that point on, the only voyeurism is done by us (audience).

the apartment complex is an artistic microcosm: the composer & Miss Torso: performing arts the sculptress: plastic art 

each apartment flat borrows from classic Hollywood genres: Thorwald: murder mystery The couple with the dog: domestic comedy

“Rear Window” = Windows of the Cinema: lens of camera & projector, window in the projection room, eye as window, & film as “window on the world”.

is also like TV programs/channels

programming // channels non-stop images (24 hours a day)

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Week 11- Film and Television

Film as an Art

20th c. debate: is cinema art or not?

camera offers:  • new forms of creativity  • new opportunities of artistic expression

Film as a mixture of reality and fantasy

The 1st movie show: L’Arrivée d’un train à la Ciotat (Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat) by the Lumière Brothers, 1895 (a realistic documentary) 

      2. Another early movie: Le Voyage dans la lune (A Trip to the Moon) by Georges Méliès, 1902 (a fantastic movie ; “the first sci-fi movie”)

Origins of the conception of the cinema

Plato’s Cave Allegory: prisoners, with their backs to a source of light ,watch shadows on a cave wall and mistake them for real.

Shadow Play: (i.e.: Karagöz & Hacivat) moving shadows on a white curtain. (image as a substitute for loss)

Film watching and Dreaming:

watching a film is like dreaming:  ‣ images are watched in darkness.  ‣ characters & heroes: images of people we would like to be.

Film and Reality

‣ In cinema, what is on the screen is not the reality but only an impression of reality.

 ‣The point-of-view of the camera means that we see a reality from

someone else’s point of view

Why do we go to cinema?

A Psychoanalytical Explanation 1- Scophophilia: drive to look at 2- Voyeurism: watching people when they don’t know (seeing without being seen) 

We take pleasure from looking at / watching other people, especially when they are not aware of it. 

Looking = Power

Rear Window (Alfred Hitchcock, 1954)

The Truman Show (1998)

Television

1909: The technology was invented. 1939: BBC began TV broadcasting. After WW2: TV became the dominant medium of mass communication in the US and Europe. Turkey: 1968 - TRT (1952 - ITU)

Television vs. Cinema

Television watching vs. Film watching

Films are watched in the dark … Watching a film is like dreaming… 

TV- watching is a daily, routine activity done under light… It does not interrupt other everyday activities (reading, talking, cooking, eating, etc.)... 

Televisual image vs. Cinematic image

The movie image is more mythical and memorable… 

Television image is repetitive, superficial, and trivial. 

Cinematic Narrative vs. TV Flow

A movie has a narrative with a beginning, middle, and end. 

Television consists of a multiplicity of programs AND it is never off (24 hours)… 

TV flow is continuous, non-stop.

Economics: Television vs. Cinema 

Financial sources: Cinema: Tickets: audiences Commercials Television: Commercials (TV sells our time to advertisers)

Addressing in Television

Television addresses us, the viewers, directly: “Dear Viewers” • as if it is providing a service we demand • as if we make TV what it is

TV News

• Organization: headlines followed by the actual news - like a newspaper. • Selection criteria: currentness, unexpectedness, meaningfulness, drama, negativity ... • Representation of “reality”: TV does not simply reflect reality, but constructs a reality for us.

 How? 1. point of view selected by the cameraman. 2. editing. 3. sub-titles and commentary.

TV Series: A Televisual mode of narrative

Series are never-ending, open, repetitive TV narratives

Genres : Soap-opera, sitcoms, action, romance, etc.. Each for a specific audience group (male, female, children, youth…)

The rule: to continue the story as long as possible (applies also to other programs -talk shows and reality shows)

“TV HAS A SERIAL MODE”

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Week 9-Blade Runner(1982)

Blade Runner is a 1982 American neo-noir science fiction film directed by Ridley Scott, written by Hampton Fancher and David Peoples, and starring Harrison Ford, Rutger Hauer, Sean Young, and Edward James Olmos. It is a loose adaptation of Philip K. Dick's novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968).

The film operates on multiple dramatic and narrative levels. It employs some of the conventions of film noir, among them the character of a femme fatale; narration by the protagonist (in the original release); chiaroscuro cinematography; and giving the hero a questionable moral outlook – extended to include reflections upon the nature of his own humanity. It is a literate science fiction film, thematically enfolding the philosophy of religion and moral implications of human mastery of genetic engineering in the context of classical Greek drama and hubris. It also draws on Biblical images, such as Noah's flood and literary sources, such as Frankenstein.

Blade Runner delves into the effects of technology on the environment and society by reaching to the past, using literature, religious symbolism, classical dramatic themes, and film noir techniques.

A sense of foreboding and paranoia pervades the world of the film: corporate power looms large; the police seem omnipresent; vehicle and warning lights probe into buildings; and the consequences of huge biomedical power over the individual are explored – especially regarding replicants' implanted memories. Control over the environment is exercised on a vast scale, and goes hand in hand with the absence of any natural life; for example, artificial animals stand in for their extinct predecessors.

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Week 7-Postmodernism

• post = after • Post-Modernism = after Modernism 

POSTMODERN: • cultural period • cultural attitude • a critical response to Modernism’s basic features.

“POSTMODERNISM” is first used in ARCHITECTURE. POSTMODERN ARCHITECTURE: • use of modern and traditional elements together. • challenges functionalism & rationalism.

Vincent Van Gogh, A Pair of Boots, 1887

Contrast between Modernism & Postmodernism: the old shoes appear as part of a whole way of living: relationship between image & reality. 

Andy Warhol, Diamond Dust Shoes, 1980

Contrast between Modernism & Postmodernism: • flat, depthless • looks like a shopwindow itself. • does not refer to an outside reality, but • refers to another image (image of shop window) • relation between images themselves = Copies without any original.

LOSS OF ORIGINAL: • a general property of the production of images in postmodern society.

 Pastiche // Simulacra // retro style: • mimicry of (past) cultural styles

MODERNISM:

‣ an aesthetic ideology 19th & 20th centuries ‣ rejected plural styles  ‣ (new machine-style or ‘no style’) ‣ broke with the past, history & tradition ‣ (experiment, innovation, novelty & originality valued)  •rejected ornament & decoration ‣ valued simplicity, clarity, order & rationality ‣ rejected the national & local ‣ favored the international & universal ‣oriented towards the future ‣dedicated to progress & improving humanity

by the 1960s, POSTMODERNISM:

‣both a continuation & rejection of Modernism. ‣ favored “pluralism” = many styles together ‣history & tradition important ‣ retro-styles, quotations, parodies and pastiche

Postmodernism and its Visual Cultures

‣ postmodernism defines an ethos in which style and image predominate ‣ Postmodern: “... incredulity towards metanarratives” (Lyotard)  • metanarrative: ‣big story ‣narrative of narratives

• postmodernism complicates divisions of culture and consciousness, • making it impossible to absorb a critical viewpoint on culture from outside and/or above it, • therefore consumerism is incorporated into life and identity. • “we may attempt to forget or ignore mass culture, but it will never forget us” (Santiago Colás) • remix culture! • remake!

Addressing the Postmodern Subject

• postmodern subject ‣ someone who will not be fooled by techniques of propaganda and illusionism ‣ someone who will get the reference ‣who is media and image literate  ‣ intertextuality: layering of references. citations, quotations

Reflexivity and Postmodern Identity

‣postmodern subject uses visual cultural practice to engage in cultural critique ‣ references to nostalgia • postmodern identity ‣ fragmented ‣pluralistic ‣multifaceted • postmodern body ‣ fragmentation ‣malleability ‣ fluidity ‣possibility of “reprogramming” ‣ “transformed body”

Orlan, 7th Surgery-Performance, Omnipresence, New York, 1993.

• pastiche: ‣ an imitation that announces itself as such  ‣ that involves combining elements from other sources

parody:  ‣ cultural productions that make fun of more serious works through humor or satire

• remake:

Postmodern Space, Geography, and the Built Environment

The Pompidou Centre in Paris, outer view

The Pompidou Centre: • symbolizes the spirit of the 20th century • construction date: 1972 to 1976  • style: High-Tech Modern, Industrial • building type: Postmodern Art Museum ‣ one of the most important museums in the world,  ‣ has the leading collection of modern & contemporary art in Europe, ‣ a vast public reference library, ‣ general documentation on 20th century art, ‣ a cinema, ‣ performance halls, ‣ a music research institute, ‣ educational activity areas,  ‣ bookshops, ‣ a restaurant & a café. 

• postmodernism challenges ‣ the division between mass, popular culture and elitism, ‣ therefore blurring the boundary between “high” or elite art and kitsch.

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Week 6-Art and the Mass Media

Jim Dine, “All-in-One Lycra Plus Attachments” 1965 Pop Art (1960s -1970s) a mixed response to mass culture: ‣ celebrates consumer products, ‣ or shows a critical response. Subjects of Pop Art: ‣ the modern city (not nature) ‣ man-made buildings, motorways, newspapers, magazines, films, television... ‣ popular culture & mass media

Lawrence Alloway first used the term “pop” an art critic, London, early 1950s.  ‣ did not describe an art movement, but contemporary mass culture.  Pop art was made by highly skilled specialists. ‣ different from folk / popular culture.

Pop Art Today An art movement that uses popular/mass culture items (movies, comics, advertising, television, etc.) in artworks. “Pop Art translates mass culture into art” 

Done by professional artists. Began in the UK (British Pop Art) in the 1950s and spread to the USA (American Pop Art) in the early 1960s. The typical art style of the 1960s.

Pioneers of Pop Art ‣Richard Hamilton (UK) – painter ‣Eduardo Paolozzi (UK) – sculptor  ‣Roy Lichtenstein (USA) – painter and sculptor ‣Andy Warhol (USA) – illustrator, painter, film-maker 

Richard Hamilton

Eduardo Paolozzi

Real Gold', Sir Eduardo Paolozzi, 1949

Roy Lichtenstein

Andy Warhol

Major Centers

‣London

‣New York

$he (Woman-in-the-Home):

Richard Hamilton, “$he”, 1958-61, Tate Gallery, London

Content: ‣ woman (housewife)                ‣ domestic appliances American advertisements where woman was: ‣ a sexual image, ‣ a styling accessory

Pop artists belong to “fine art”, not mass culture.

AMERICAN POP

  When Pop-Art spread to America, some critics accused the artists for copying advertisements or comics. (plagiarism)   Pop artists appropriate existing images & they place them in new contexts.

-Roy Lichenstein appropriated, recontextualized that ad into “high art”.

Roy Lichtenstein, “Girl with a Ball”, 1961, oil painting, fine art

ABSTRACT EXPRESSIONISM  ‣Emotional ‣ Intuitive ‣ Spontaneous ‣ Personal ‣ Serious ‣Committed ‣Autographic ‣Moral 

POP ART ‣ Unemotional ‣Carefully thought ‣ Systematic ‣ Impersonal ‣ Ironic ‣Non-autographic ‣Amoral

The Politics Of Pop

 Similarity between propaganda of the Chinese Communist Party (Chairman Mao) & propaganda of capitalist mass media (Marilyn Monroe). 

Salvador Dali, “Mao/Marilyn”, 1971, cover design for the French edition of Vogue.

Pop Art especially Andy Warhol 

Celebrated: repetition of stereotypes, & cult figures. Stated: the capitalist nature of Art under capitalism.

Andy Warhol, “Marilyn Diptych”, 1962 silk-screen on canvas. Tate Gallery, London

Repetition: intensified the icon-like, stereotypical qualities of the original.  Vibrant colors = mask Her make-up & smile was like a mask hiding her true self. 

Pop Art in America

‣an art movement of the 1960s. ‣has roots in Dada & Cubism using everyday objects & lettering. ‣inspired by: America & the quality of American life.  ‣American Pop Art works were very big in sizes  • as the expression of a society enjoying its imperial swagger on a transcontinental scale.  • feeling of pure ambiguity  • the ability to look into America’s commercial culture  • Pop artists were both reflecting and defining a change (a new society)  • the un-history of a very contemporary world. the creation of art in that place at     that time

Andy Warhol ‣Comes from commercial illustration ‣At first, he experimented with comic strips.

‣Then, he moved on to everyday objects, like the soup he used to drink everyday for lunch: The Campbell’s soup can

Repetition ‣ to remove any significance of the single image ‣ property of mass production & consumer society.

‣ left handwork & used silk-screen. ‣ He made pictures of well-known film stars.

Andy Warhol, “Turquoise Marilyn” 1962

Roy Lichtenstein

 ‣used the form of comic strips,

‣impersonal, mechanical & removed style ‣reflects mass/consumer society 

Jim Dine

 - famous American Pop artist turned “ordinary life” into dignity of art.

Jim Dine, “All-in-One Lycra Plus Attachments” 1965

Claes Oldenburg (b. 1929)

‣ everyday objects

‣ over-scale

‣ inappropriate materials.

‣ accepts the American life-style & re-examines it

George Segal:

‣ life-size & ghost-like figures;

‣ real-life situations with people.

George Segal - The Dancers

Tom Wesselman (1931-2004)

has 2 major series: nudes & still lifes.

Tom Wesselman (1931-2004) Monica with Tulips

JAMES ROSENQUIST (b. 1933)

James Rosenquist | House of Fire

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Week 04-Art and the Unconscious

SURREALISM:

joan miro, The Smile of the Flamboyant Wings, 1953

The Dream Caused by the Flight of a Bee (1944) - Salvador Dali

AIMS of Surrealism: ‣ to reveal “the unconscious”, ‣ to dis-orient “normal” expectations ‣ to question reality & how it is represented

TECHNIQUES OF SURREALISM: ‣ ambiguity ‣ suggestion: not showing explicitly ‣ showing fragments

The Barbarians-Max Ernst

-Women: ‣ Closer to “madness” = unconscious than men. ‣ Object of desire  ‣ Fantasy life of Surrealists: erotic + industrial, rational ‣ The unconscious = repressed, underside of modernity

La Révolution Surréaliste, 1924 

  Germain Berton:   a woman who assassinated a right-wing politician.

FREUD & THE UNCONSCIOUS

Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) -Viennese doctor founder / inventor of PSYCHOANALYSIS

The nature of THE UNCONSCIOUS:

‣ No simple, direct instincts (or drives)  Eg: sexual instinct, maternal instinct

REPRESSION: Occurs when to satisfy a pleasurable need/wish involves risks of unpleasure due to social requirements.

DREAMS: 

A way for repressed desires to re-enter consciousness

1) MANIFEST CONTENT: the images that you see in your dream 2) LATENT CONTENT: meaning of the dream; interpretation  3) CONDENSATION: the process where latent content is visualized into manifest content (meaning) -------- (imagery) 4) DISPLACEMENT: process by which focus is shifted in the dream from an important element to an insignificant one

PSYCHOANALYSIS APPLIED ON ART:

Ambiguous smile:

An expression of Leonardo’s repressed feelings for his mother...

Leonardo Da Vinci: Mona Lisa, 1503-05

Luis bunuel -un chien andalou

shocking effect 

contradictory, & absurd imagery

unnatural combinations

“WOMAN” as the focus of dreams and fantasy

unexpected combinations

absurd, illogical combinations

non-linear time

Illogical combinations - door leads to beach

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Week 03-European Modernism

Defining Modernism: 1. Reductionist Approach: reduces everything to its key features or common traits. ‣ intellectuality  ‣ nihilism (Nihilism: the belief that nothing has meaning or value.) ‣ a discontinuity (with the past) ‣ an attitude of detachment ‣ the use of myth to define art ‣ a feeling of alienation & loneliness 

2. Historical / Sociological Approach: explains Modernism as the outcome of historical & sociological contexts: ‣ continuation of or in contrast with Romanticism ‣ a reaction to Aestheticism ‣ an inversion of Realism  ‣ a precursor of Postmodernism ‣ a product of World War I 5  Fredrick Jameson, Peter Bürger,...) 

3. A Range of Responses to a Perceived Crisis: not a single & unified response.

the “disillusionment” of artists in the collapse of Rationality

Marcel Duchamp, The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even. (The Large Glass) 1915-1923

the “disillusionment” of artists:

Hugo Ball (founder of DaDa-ism)

Reasons of Disillusionment: 1) Changing sense of REALITY (nature)

RESULTS IN ART: rejection of linear perspective

-multi-perspective

Jean Metzinger, 1913, En Canot (Im Boot), oil on canvas

-montage techniques

Picasso, 1912

-no perspective

2) Changing Sense of HUMAN NATURE:

1. Dadaists: ‣spontaneity, automatic writing ‣intuition ‣imagination 

2. Surrealists:  ‣released the power of unconscious & dreams

RENÉ MAGRITTE (1898-1967) The Philosopher's Lamp, 1936

Cubists

Georges Braque, 'Bottle and Fishes' c.1910–2

3) Change in the relationship between MAN and REALITY

Abstraction: Feeling of alienation resulted in attempts to find a “universal language”!

Canto Xll, 1964 - Barnett Newman

White Negress II, 1926 - Constantin Brancusi

Modernism as Response to Crisis:

1. Nihilists: created the darkest works of 20th century, went insane (mad), or committed suicide. ex.: Nietzsche went insane, Van Gogh killed himself.

2. Decadents: mostly Expressionists, wanted to relieve the pain by using drugs, alcohol or violent experience. ex.: the late Hugo Ball, Gustav Klimt, Oscar Kokoschka, Egon Schiele,..

Gustav Klimt (1862-1918), Portrait of Adele Bloch

The Crab', Oskar Kokoschka, 1939-40

Modernism as Responses to Crisis (cont’d)

3) Aestheticists:

Example: Symbolists

Gustave Moreau: The Apparition

Guardian Spirit of the Waters (1878), Odilon Redon

4) Escape into Past : a tendency towards Primitivism for inspiration & imitation.

The Day of the God (1894) - Paul Gauguin

Self-Portrait, 1959 - 1968 - Marc Chagall

5) Escape into Future: (in contrast to former responses)

the Futurists

Giacomo Balla Street Light c. 1910-11

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WEEK 2- The Function of Artists in Society

rtists’ choices about their messages through their artworks, provide certain social role(s) & they work with very different techniques.

Example:

- Donna Cox: uses super-computers to visualize complex mathematical formulas.

- Adrian Piper: uses performance art and video to criticize social issues.

THE FIVE SOCIAL ROLES OF ARTISTS:

1. The Artist as Skilled Worker

‣ trained in a manual skill  ‣ a specific, narrowly defined job ‣ solves physical & technical problems, not intellectual problems ‣Social Function: Craftsperson 

-Book of Lindisfarne, Northumbria, c. 715

-In the 20th century, commercial artists, like Norman Rockwell, have continued to work as an “artist as skilled worker”. 

-Country Doctor,Norman Rockwell Saturday Evening Post story illustration April 12, 1947.

EXAGGERATED (positive) END: Artist as Virtuoso Perfect, flawless technique is the goal.

-Edward Hopper Rooms by the Sea, 1951

EXAGGERATED REVERSAL: Artist as Anarchist “A rule-breaker, a rejector of any social integration” 

Example: The Dadaists

Hugo Ball reciting Karawane at Cabaret Voltaire, Zurich, 1916

'Fountain', Marcel Duchamp, 1917, replica 1964

- more subtle form: Artist as Professional (architect, designer…)

2) The Artist as intellectual: 

‣Artists investigate all areas of human knowledge and contribute to them 

‣Artists are inventors & discoverers

Michelangelo, Creation of Adam Sistine Chapel Ceiling, 1502

‣originated in high Renaissance 

‣ Idea: Artist as an intellectual hero + Art as an educator of humanity

‣ social role: researcher

2) The Artist as intellectual:

One and Three Chairs, 1965 - Joseph Kosuth

‣ The art is no longer an object, but also an idea.

EXAGGERATED positive END: 

Artist as Genius Artists are not just philosophers, but also geniuses.

Example: Leonardo da Vinci

pages from sketch book

EXAGGERATED REVERSAL: 

Artist as Naïve innocent

Henri Rousseau (1844-1910) The Dream, 1910

Monkeys In The Jungle, 1910 - Canvas Print

3) The Artist as entrepreneur:

strengths:  ‣ Artist is free of the church and the monarchy, free to develop ideas. weaknesses: ‣ not free from “the market”, must produce things that will sell.

 EXAGGERATED END: (Myth) Artist as Independent Hero 

‣ More interested in fame & money than art

Andy Warhol Self Portrait, 1967

Self-Portrait, 1907 - Pablo Picasso

EXAGGERATED REVERSAL: 

Artist as Economic Failure 

‣ the myth of the starving artist

3) The Artist as entrepreneur:

Helen Frankenthaler: sold her image to Rolex watches in “Art & Antiques” magazine

Keith Haring: has his own distribution network, similar to a large corporation.

4) The Artist as social critic: Art fights against injustice. 

Art acts as a way to transform the world.

-Barbara Kruger 1987

-I See Your Body, 1999,  Jenny Holzer

-Banksy

EXAGGERATED positive END: 

(Myth) Artist as Social Outcast

 ‣ Artist living alone, away from society in another culture

- Woman Holding a Fruit, 1893 - Paul Gauguin

EXAGGERATED REVERSAL: (negative end) Artist as Social Parasite 

‣ Artists make no real productive contribution to society; 

‣ rather, self-indulgent.

5) The Artist as social healer:

strengths:

 ‣ Artists are concerned with human relationships, attempting to create healthy futures weaknesses: 

‣ no shared system of belief in Western standards

EXAGGERATED positive END: ; Myth) Artist as Mystic ‣ Artwork towards transcendent, spiritual goals

-Bruce Nauman, "Read Reap"

EXAGGERATED REVERSAL: (Myth) Artist as charlatan ‣ A trickster: a person who deceives or plays tricks

Joseph Beuys, The Pack, 1969