Constellation – The Body in Art, Design and Society

For my first constellation term, I’ll be looking into The Body in Art, Design and Society. We looked into how the first ever recorded plastic surgery was in 600 BC, which was a nose reconstruction; a technology we think of as a modern invention. We also looked into the 4 Humorial System, which linked someone’s illness as something given to them from God for  an immoral action, and other different ways people have seen the body in history and how that impacted medicine and technological advances.

We’ve been asked to look up pictures that show a relationship between the body and Fine Art, so I chose a painting by Picasso called Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, showing how abstract an artist could transform a human body, by creating them into sharp shapes, which seems unnatural but they still look human. The second image I chose is the portrait of Anne of Cleaves, which is a great example of how paintings were altered to not look identical to those who were painted, but to make them look better; similar to what we have today, from photoshop to instagram filters. Henry V111 agreed to marrying her from looking at a painting of her but later described her as looking like a “horse” when they met and ended the marriage.

The image below is a ‘selfie’ of myself, which I have uploaded onto my Instagram account and used ‘filter’ on it, a form of changing the lighting to make you appear better looking.

By putting up a ‘selfie’, or any other picture of yourself, it’s on the internet permanently and that picture has now made you an object; you are owned by social media. Therefore, as an object, it can never be an owner, can’t be free or communicate, merely making us still property. We willfully allow this to happen because, otherwise, we’re ‘missing out’ or ‘out of the loop’, thus feel compelled to contribute to this cycle. This means that the audience, who can see the image (practically anyone with access to the internet) are able to say anything about the image and perhaps use if for something, leaving us vulnerable. I also edited this photo of myself by using the social media app called ‘Instagram’, which objectifies me even more by making me more ‘acceptable’ to society as a product to be consumed by spectators behind their screens.

The opposite of this, which could perhaps be social media/the audience who view your image, is a ‘subject’. They are powerful through the freedom of not being owned and can communicate freely.

Hegemony- Leadership or dominance, especially by one state or social group over others. An example of this is Hegenomic Masculinity; A developing debate within the growing theoretical literature on men and masculinity concerns the relationship of gender systems to the social formation. Crucially at issue is the question of the autonomy of the gender order. Some, in particular Waters, are of the opinion that change in masculine gender systems historically has been caused exogenously and that, without those external factors, the systems would stably reproduce.For Hochschild, the “motor” of this social change is the economy, particularly and currently, the decline in the purchasing power of the male wage, the decline in the number and proportion of “male” skilled and unskilled jobs, and the rise in “female” jobs in the growing services sector.  On the other side of the argument, others have been trying to establish “the laws of motion” of gender systems. Connell, for instance, has insisted on the independence of their structures, patterns of movement. and determinations, most notably in his devastating critiques of sexrole theory. “Change is always something that happens to sex roles, that impinges on them. It comes from outside, as in discussions of how technological and economic changes demand a shift to a ‘modern’ male role for men. Or it comes from inside the person, from the ‘real self’ that protests against the artificial restrictions of constraining roles. Sex role theory has no way of grasping change as a dialectic arising within gender relations themselves.”

Binary-The gender binary is a term used to describe the practice of only recognizing two distinct genders. You deviate from the heteronormative standard by being non-binary, or even simply performing gender in a way that doesn’t subscribe to a strict separation of “man” or “woman” (and the assumption that “masculinity” should only be performed by the former and “femininity” by the latter).

Heteronormativity- (Warner,1991) Strict norms of different genders (male and female) and that heterosexuality is the ‘norm’. Heteronormativity, then, is a system that works to normalize behaviors and societal expectations that are tied to the presumption of heterosexuality and an adherence to a strict gender binary.

http://everydayfeminism.com/2015/07/what-is-heteronormativity/

http://ro.uow.edu.au/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1149&context=artspapers

For my essay on The Body, my main focus will be on the female body and how it’s controlled by the government, cultures, religion, etc. I’ll be looking into the control over women’s bodies throughout history up until the present day. I’ve ordered a book through Cardiff Metropolitan’s library called ‘Theorizing the Young Woman in the Body, Body and Society, Vol II’ by Dr L Frost, which is exactly what I need for my essay because I’ll be thoroughly researching how society sees and treats women from all cultures, especially looking into how we treat women seeking abortions or escaping child marriages and FGM. I will need to gather as much information as possible to create a convincing argument on such a controversial and sensitive subject.

Affordance, Conventions and Design by Donald A. Norman 

We live in a world which has objects in it which all contain affordance. We learn to communicate with them and to not deliberately bump into them by encountering objects with possibilities for action, i.e. handles for pushing, pulling, picking, etc. Therefore, when something is afforded, it is given a possibility for action. The design of something conveys information (visual clues) to us to know how to use it. When we pull a handle down, it’s a part of perception affordance. The difference between actual affordance and perception affordance is how an object contains actual affordance but perception affordance is playing around with the object to understand it and its actual affordance. We understand what to do with objects by using our bodies and knowledge of what we can see.

Contextualisation for Shaped Paintings

An artist that I’ve read about recently who corresponds to my piece for shaped painting is Ilona Granet who uses feminism as a theme of a lot of her artworks and also includes text to them. The piece that I relate to the most is ‘Curb Your Animal Instincts’;

The image is of a beast straining on a leash towards a woman. Her work raises the obvious point that if there is a city ordinance against dog feces and horn blowing, why isn’t there one against harassing women on the streets?

 

Trip to London

On Wednesday the Fine Art group went on a trip to London to visit galleries such as Tate Britain and Saatchi, which were delightful to see in the flesh. I got to see some of my favourite artists, who were William Blake and David Hockney. A few of the photos I took from the day are below;

I can really relate my work to William Blake’s paintings and drawings because, like his poems, he often made them political, especially towards society and its unfairness. Although his were more directed towards harsh conditions poor children and people endured during the 1700s, I can link today’s general society by looking into minorities and how they are still being treated poorly.

Concertopia: Contextualisation

I took inspiration from a book from the library called ‘CCCP:Cosmic Communist Constructions Photographed’, which was an art and architectural movement that began in Russia’s draughtsmanship in 1919. The main goal was to favor the use of constructivist Art towards social purposes, which continued until 1934.Photographer Frederic Chaubin reveals 90 buildings in this book, sited in fourteen former Soviet Republics which express what could be considered as the fourth age of Soviet architecture. They reveal an unexpected rebirth of imagination, an unknown burgeoning that took place from 1970 until 1990. Contrary to the twenties and thirties, no “school” or main trend emerges here. These buildings represent a chaotic impulse brought about by a decaying system. Their diversity announces the end of Soviet Union. Taking advantage of the collapsing monolithic structure, the holes of the widening net, architects revisited all the chronological periods and styles, going back to the roots or freely innovating. Some of the daring ones completed projects that the Constructivists would have dreamt of (Druzhba sanatorium), others expressed their imagination in an expressionist way (Tbilisi wedding palace). A summer camp, inspired by sketches of a prototype lunar base, lays claim to its suprematist influence (Promethee). Then comes the speaking architecture widespread in the last years of the USSR: a crematorium adorned with concrete flames (Kiev crematorium), a technological institute with a flying saucer crashed on the roof (Kiev institute), a political center watching you like a Big Brother (Kaliningrad House of Soviet). This puzzle of styles testifies to all the ideological dreams of the period, from the obsession with the cosmos to the rebirth of privacy and it also outlines the geography of the USSR, showing how local influences made their exotic twists before bringing the country to its end.The brutal shapes and use of concrete in these particular buildings caught my eye for this project because it’s exactly what we’ve been looking into and looking for around Cardiff. Therefore, I used these images to create the three dimensional buildings from my prints. Examples are below;

 

 

Concertopia

My final material project is concertopia with Andre Stitt. ‘Concrete jungles’ or ‘urban monstrosities’ are some of the terms used to describe Britain’s new towns and city centres. Through photography and screen printing we will explore how abstract forms emerge through the experience of urban life and the built environment. This photographic material and personal experience gathered from an initial walking tour of Cardiff will be used to create prints that we will transform into models for a future utopian architecture. Conditional living environments, new towns, housing estates, and the architecture of civil and totalitarian conflict are merged, deconstructed, re-fabricated and evidenced through wall relief works and cast concrete memorials. These are examples of ‘new towns’ where this architecture exists;

Cwmbran, Wales.

These are the images I gathered from around Cardiff of this style of architecture;

I found these by using psychogeography, which is an approach to geography that emphasises playfulness and “drifting” around urban environments. It was defined in 1955 by Guy Debord as “the study of the practice laws and specific effects of the geographical environment, consciously organised or not, on the emotions and behavior of individuals.”

For this brief, we’ve made prints to go with our images of concrete buildings. I photoshopped four of my images to create this image below and then edited it to black and white to let my prints stand out more;

This is what came from them;

I really like how the block colours have accentuated the concrete block style of the buildings, however, only some of the textures and shapes came through. I worked with what I got out of the prints and made 3D pieces out of them;

I believe that the textures and block colours have helped make these buildings correspond well to this material project because it adds depth and even more dimension to the piece.

Library Research Project

My current project is my library research project which consists of one intense studio week to create at least two pieces of artwork that somehow explore the theme of Outside/Inside. During this week, to inform my ideas, I will also be looking at two books; ‘Laughter Ten Years After’ by Jo Anna Isaak and ‘Chiharu Shiota’ by Hatje Cantz, two journals; ‘Woman’s Art Journal’ and , and finally, one DVD, which was Lolita (1997).

In 1947, Humbert, a European professor of French literature, rents a room in the home of widow Charlotte Haze, largely because he sees her adolescent daughter Dolores, also called “Lo”, while touring the house. Obsessed from boyhood with girls of this age (whom he calls “nymphets”), Humbert is immediately smitten with Lo and marries Charlotte just to be near her. The film portrays Lo as being the one to ‘blame’ for Humbert’s obsession, even though Lo is only 12 and he is considerably older (around 37), which reflects the victim blaming of today, where we see many cases of predatory men not getting prosecuted because our society and legal system blames young girls/women for their actions. The book, which was released in 1955, actually portrays how it was actually Humbert who was the ‘bad’ one and certainly contained a tone which definitely blamed him for his actions and that Lo’s flirtation wasn’t what caused his obsession, but himself. The way this has influenced my shaped painting is by how sexualised Lo is in the film, especially considering her age, and how her flirtation and body was to blame for Humbert’s action. I used cleavage for this because showing it means that you’re bieng ‘flirtatious’ or ‘asking for it’, which is ludicrous. Female (or male) bodies aren’t obscene.

The two books I looked at was Laughter Ten Years After by Anna Isaak and Chiharu Shiot by Hatje Cantz which included images and themes that I added to my pieces. I chose Guerilla Girls from Laughter Ten Years After because their use of political and informing text, often on top of images, corresponded with my shaped painting. My other piece was inspired by ‘Becoming Painting’, 1994 because it’s a performance piece of a girl with red paint all over her, which heavily implies blood and perhaps menstrual blood, which is something I’ve touched upon, and her other performance piece, ‘From DNA To DNA’, which is again about blood, but this time with the use of red string. I combined the string that looks like it’s stained by blood, which is meant to symbolise menstrual blood, and a performer who has blood all over her hands and crotch area with a look of embarrassment and shame on her to highlight how our society still shames women (and men) for periods to the point of never speaking openly about it. I also used photoshop for the first time to get the layered edit to it in order to practice.

Do Women Have To Be Naked To Get Into the Met. Museum? 1989 Guerrilla Girls null Purchased 2003 http://www.tate.org.uk/art/work/P78793

I also made this performance/photography piece into a book mark because, similarly to periods, it’s a very normal and common thing since half of the population will have/have them.

My shaped painting is below as well as my wall during the project;

I also took inspiration from ‘Women’s Art Journals’ since they looked into femininity, nudity, female strength, etc which is something I was very interested in for this project.

 

Shaped Paintings

I’ve started my new project called Shaped Paintings, all based on the idea of cutting out the shape of your painting instead of using a rectangle/square canvas, therefore you have no background, which is useful for most types of paintings.

I decided to make a political piece that could be used for the Inside, Outside brief. I made a drawing of a woman’s face but with one large eye in the center of her forehead, speaking (in a speech bubble), “Your view is too narrow to see me”, which is based on how the all of the world’s bigots have all come out because of influential people like Donald Trump and his narrow-minded comments.

I’ll be cutting out wooden shapes for this piece, and make sure that the eye is the main focus of the piece by having it stick out.

I’ve finally started my shaped painting properly by learning how to use the bandsaw and sander. I cut out my board into 5 different shapes; the face and neck as one, 3 for the eye and one for the speech bubble. I then primed it and painted it green to start layering the paint, as green is good for pink/skin colours and I plan on panting mine pink to add femininity to the painting.

I’ve almost finished the piece now that I’ve painted the original drawing idea onto it. All I need to do next is make the eye pieces stand out as 3D objects by adding something thicker to the back of them.

I’ve finally finished my shaped painting by gluing all of the pieces together and adding wood between certain parts, such as the eye, to create my desired 3D look. I’m very happy with how it has turned out and will definitely pursue this style of painting for my next project.

Today, Tomorrow, Yesterday, September

This week, I’ve been working on a project called ‘Today, Tomorrow, Yesterday, September’, and I’m creating a sketchbook out of so many different types of processes, such as print making on silkscreen, different types of photography processes, etc. Below are a few images of my work so far to reflect my time here at Cardiff as a fresher;

In one of my mini sketchbooks, called late September, I made hidden pages with writing, such as “I miss my dog” etc to make it more personal and not as ‘cute’ looking, adding a more personal narrative;

 

Summer Project

I have just began my ‘art journey’ here at Cardiff School of Art and Design to complete a degree. The work actually began over the summer, which was a project of completing two postcards and posting them to the university and an additional two pieces that we took in during our first week, alongside a few sketchbooks we had been working on. I wanted to draw attention to my art styles, which can differ from gothic scenery, inspired by Jane Eyre this time around to very simple illustrative drawings. Examples of what I created are below;