Contemporary & Global Art

Ouline of Oral Presentation on Bruce Nauman

Bibliography:
- Art 21
- The Art Story
       - Comfortable? Easy? Not for Bruce Nauman. (New York Times Art Review)
       - Listen: Can You Hear the Space? (New York Times Article)
- Khan Academy
- Guggenheim Museum
- Phildelphia Museum of Art

Style:
- Installation Art
- Video Art
- Sculptures
- Performance Art
- Photography Art
- Neon Art

Influences:
- Ludwig Wittgenstein
- Process Art
- Minimalism
- Man Ray

Common Ideas and Themes:
- Readymade objects
- Crude Finished Product
- Language (and how it can fail)
- Post-Minimalism
- Neon

Important Artworks
- The True Artist Helps the World by Revealing Mystic Truths
- South American Triangle
- One Hundred Live and Die
- Mapping the Studio
- Setting a Good Corner

Postwar Modern Movements

Eleanor Antin is an artist that creates films, drawings, photographs, installations, and performances. Many of her works feature history as a means to critique the present. An example of this is Antin's photo series "The Last Days of Pompeii" which draws parallels between the people of the ancient Roman Empire and Americans. She also uses humor in many of her artworks. She felt that art, and life in general, is much more rewarding if can trigger emotions and still make you laugh.

Between World Wars

The Dada movement started after World War I as a protest to the horrors many artists endured. Dadaists mocked Western society with absurd art that ignored traditional artistic values. Marcel Duchamp was a Dadaist that used everyday objects, known as readymades, that wouldn't normally be considered art. One such artwork was In Advanced of the Broken Arm (pictured above). Duchamp signed a snow shovel and called it art. This challenges the idea that art something that has to be made by the artist. It also challenged the idea that art has to be aesthetically pleasing.

Jacob Lawrence is considered the most important African American artist of the 1900s. He spent his teenage years in New York City during the Harlem Renaissance. Lawrence often depicted African Americans, such as his Migration Series. He called his style "dynamic cubism". His influences include the discrimination that blacks experienced, poverty, crime, and his hopes for his community.

Impressionism and Post Impressionism

Impressionism started in 1860s in Europe. The impressionist artists began to paint the world around them instead of the stories that the realist and romantic artists imagined. Many impressionists painted outdoors to capture ever-changing qualities of nature. Impressionists also painted society, especially the middle-class, in everyday activities. Some qualities that be became much more popular during this time are quick brush strokes and the cropped edges that cut off parts of the subject, also known as free form. Below you can see Bridge over a Pond of Water Lilies by Claude Monet which employed the use of quick, short brush strokes.

Post-Impressionism began in the late 1800s and had a similar style to Impressionism but the emotion behind the art was different. Post-Impressionists continued to look at their surroundings but believed that there is a deeper meaning past the objective observations of the Impressionists. Non-western cultures began to have a big impact on Western artists of this time. This can be seen in the artwork of Vincent Van Gogh, Paul Gauguin, and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, for example, who all used flat shapes typically seen in Japanese art. The Boy in the Red Vest by Paul Cézanne is an example of post-impressionism and one can see the sorrow behind it and the stylistic lack of depth. 

Design Elements and Principles

1. Artists can unify their artwork by using a repetition of shapes or colors to create patterns that . An example of a piece of art that uses repetition is The Migration Gained in Momentum  by American artist Jacob Lawrence. The black, green, and red clothes and luggage create a sense of unity throughout the painting. The identical walking shape of the human figures also add on to unity in the painting. These two ways of expressing unity help convey that the people shown in the painting had to stick together and rely on each other while making their way to the northern part of America during the Great Migration.

2. Asymmetry is created by putting objects in positions that balance out with objects on the other areas of the artwork. The size and color of these objects can also affect where the objects are placed. Vincent Van Gogh's Starry Night is an example of an asymmetric painting. The bright yellow moon in the top right balances out the much larger and darker cypress tree on the left. The town on the bottom and the stars on the top also contribute to the artwork's asymmetrical balance. The scattered stars counter act the much more compact buildings, attracting the viewers' eyes equally.

3. Scale can be used to create an illusion or image that would not have the same impact if made to normal scale. Scale is often implemented by making objects very large or very small. Claes Oldenburg and Cloosje van Nruggen's Knife Slicing Through Wall depicts an 11 ft. long knife seemingly cutting through a wall. The size of the knife allows the artists to poke fun at and emphasize the building's unique architecture.

Egyptian and Greek Art

These examples of Roman and Egyptian artworks both say a lot about their respective cultures. The Roman sculpture on the left depicts a young Hercules, the son of the god Zeus and a mortal named Alcmene, who is known for his feats of strength and bravery. It is made of marble and is 8 ft. tall. It portrays the recurring theme of physical beauty and perfection that the Greeks and Romans valued. The relaxed pose, realism, and almost dynamic qualties are also archetypal of art from those two cultures. 

The Egyptian sculpture on the left is a ka statue of the pharaoh Hor which is made of wood. This statue, like many Egyptian artworks, served a religious purpose. Ka statues are meant to house and protect the ka (life force) of a person after death. This statue also displays the typical pose of Egyptian sculptures of pharaohs that represents the strength of the royalty.

While the sculptures look very different and served different purposes, they both show what the people of the ancient empires of Rome and Egypt valued. They both cherished strength and the elegance of the human body.

About Me

My name is Alec and I like to watch soccer and football. I am a Computer Science Major at LaGuardia Community College.