Louise Despont is an artist who works and lives out of New York, where she was born in 1983; and Bali, Indonesia. She possesses a bohemian flair that bleeds into her artwork. Ms. Despont chooses to create very large drawings on seperate sheets pulled from antique accounting ledgers, draftsman paper, and other gridded papers. With the help of her assistant, Nicole Wong, Ms. Despont uses colored pencils, graphite, and a hefty collection of architect/artist stencils to make her ideas a reality.
Stepwell Figures
She creates her intricate artwork with elements pulled from her infinite amount of inspiration images—old photographs, Buddhist medical charts, various textiles, patterns, beehives, architectural schematics, soundwaves, etc.
Many different elements may be chosen and woven into these designs, which are themselves very expressive and geometric, but also fluid and earthy.
Fort
More often than not, Ms. Despont finds herself working on her living room floor than at an artist’s table. She fully invests herself into every drawing, and into her work projects as a whole. According to Ms. Despont herself, her work is 90% research and 10% action. Oftentimes, she spends months just collecting images and making portfolios of every photo she finds. Because her pieces are so large, they have to be fitted into even larger frames; and because so much goes into their creation overall, it takes some time to get each drawing into a gallery, and at times she can do only one show a year.
Water Temple
But she never lets that stop her from brainstorming or innovating.
Oftentimes, the antique accounting ledger paper she draws abstract shapes, florals, or designs on contain old checks and balances from their past owners. By letting these numbers and words show through without bothering to change them or white them out, Ms. Despont makes the figures part of her work, which in itself looks antique.
Stepwell Garden
Ms. Despont has also stated that while her work appears very calm and naturalistic, she actually calculates every mark she makes. By using stencils, she creates designs that are so beautifully designed, one would never think they were made with a stencil at all. Ms. Despont’s base of operations is in the comfort of her home, and she often finds herself streched out on her bedroom floor with her huge, sectioned layouts.
Torch Ginger With Elephant Ear
And she has said that she really prefers to work this way. “I find that being able to work at home—that I wake up in the morning, I have breakfast, and I start working—it’s a very smooth transition to a quieter, more centered place.”
Also, because Ms. Despont creates all of her drawings using relatively inexpensive materials, she does not have to wait until she has large amounts of money or has recieved donations to create the pictures, which she just likes to “just let happen.”
Heliconia Mask
All of her drawings started with simple marks that turned into something more.
“Those marks contain the seed of the drawing,” she commented in Louise Despont Draws Deep. This is something that is true of virtually any drawing, or any work of art.
And in Louise Despont’s case, it is the foundation of her media.
Katharina Grosse was born in Germany in the year 1961. She has been an artist for many years, studying at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, a fine arts academy in Germany. (Art21) She now teaches at this institute. Katharina paints using a spray gun with acrylic paint. It allows her to cover large areas with paint in unique designs, unlike any other artist. She references the spray gun as an extension of herself. She believes it gives her a larger reach, enlarges her body, and helps her paintings be completed faster. She uses many distinctive techniques, often using warehouses to hold her works of art. She can cover the walls and floor of buildings, in and outdoors, with paint. Using a spray gun this way allows her to transition between different surfaces fast and seamlessly. She chooses to paint with an entirely different style. Katharina proposes different ways to look at space of a room with her artwork. It is her goal, and a challenge to make painting visible and a regular part of our life. (Artist Interview with South London Gallery) When she paints, she says everything around her slows down. By using one tool, and only several colors of paint, she has minimal options. This allows her to slow the mental strain of making art, and flow within her gift of creativity. She said, “the architecture space is materialized, and painting is psychological” in an interview. She uses architectural surfaces like windows as components of her art. She uses windows to create techniques so that her paint stops at the edges of windows or other architecture causing her audience to wonder how the painting got there. (Artist Interview with Moca Cleveland) She uses a psychedelic and dynamic way of painting to create illusions. Each piece of art is abstract so that the audience is immersed in the art. Rooms are coated in layers of rainbow paint which gives the viewers a distinctive viewpoint of each section. The art is all about perspective, so the same work can be viewed from different places and have different sizes and interpretations. In her work, “One Floor Up More Highly,” she has spray painted sand and rocks within a building. She is experimenting with texture and materials to create unique images and sculptures. In another exhibit, she has a work titled, “Two Young Women Come and Pull Out a Table.” This piece contains spray painted spheres hanging all over the room. In “Things They Had Taken Along To Eat Together,” there are a spray-painted couch and large rock sculptures in different colors. The title sparks the idea that the couch could represent a love interest that she no longer has. It causes the question ‘why’ to be asked. Why would someone spray paint a couch? She leaves these questions to those enjoying her exhibit. I think a part of her doesn’t know why, but it works. Other pieces have the same oddity to them, and many are untitled. Others have very odd names, shapes, and locations.“Shadow” looks like large disks that have been cut and spray painted. Like all artists, she hopes to convey emotion, yet she does so in a unique way that is all her own. (Application for Curatorship; Katharina Grosse) Explosions of color litter surfaces. By spraying her acrylic paint in sometimes abandoned locations, it resembles vandalism. She is using the urban setting and idea of graffiti in a modern way.
Wunderblock 2013Things They Had Taken Along To Eat Together 2012CincyUntitled 2004Final Cuts 2003Skrow No Repap 2008
Seoul, Korea, 1962 is where and when Do Ho Suh came into this world. He served a term in the south Korean military and attended Seoul National University were he earned his BFA and MFA in oriental painting. Later he relocated and continued his study in the United states at the Rhode Island school of design and also Yale University. He is best known for his convoluted sculptures of which are more than just objects to look at. He is interested in how people interact with, view, and occupy public space. With that being said, people can literally walk on some of these sculptures, the floor sculptures.
As you can see here, these people are standing on top of thousands of unique and tiny human figures.
Another one of his floor sculptures is titled “Some/One”. In this work, there is a covering of hundreds of military dog tags on the ground which rise one on top of the other to form an empty suit of armor. This phantom armor reveals the reality of how a military is made up of individual soldiers.
Another outstanding work of his is “Rubbing/Loving”. In which he covers his old apartment, in New York, entirely with white paper and then rubs every inch with a colored pencil capturing all of the memories from years of inhabiting the space. Below is a clip that shows the art in the making and in this clip he explains the reason for the title which is truly beautiful on it’s own. This would be his final artwork in this apartment for he had done some works with and in it previously.
Do Ho Suh’s work often deals with space and how we perceive it. He works with a variety of mediums to create pieces that provoke us to think more deeply of the places we inhabit as human beings and what those places mean to us.
Suh’s work has been featured in the following museums: Seattle Art Museum and Seattle Asian Art Museum, Whitney Museum of American Art at Philip Morris, Serpentine Gallery in London, and Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art in Kansas City, Missouri. Do Ho Suh also represented Korea at the Venice Biennale in 2001.
Matthew Ritchie is an artist who was born in London, England, in 1964, and lives and works in New York. He derives his work from his imagination, and also from different occult practices, Judeo Christian religion and principles. His work is directly on the surface and he uses it towards being 3 Dimensional. He also uses science throughout his artwork and applies it to his art projects using different sculptures, and floor-to-wall installations. His work is referencing the expressionist artists of the 20th Century. It differs from them in their tightness and linearity. Thus, his abstracted narrative work fits into the same category of the work of contemporary artists such as Matthew Barney and Bonnie Collura.
Oil, ink, wax and varnish on canvas
Throughout his work he uses different shapes and symbols. They can be described as artistic, for example, the different colors that he uses to describe the imagination of his own artwork.
Oil, ink, wax and varnish on canvas
Oil and ink on canvasOil and marker on linen
His work is deemed to be very impressive, for instance, the different shapes he uses and how he applies them to his artwork is superb. He uses different colors and shapes to describe how he feels about space and science. The different perspectives on religion, philosophy, and science all tie in to help create his complicated, yes freshly simple works. The way he uses science throughout his artwork helps to describe how the different roles that science plays in society. It helps to visualize what science is and how it can be used to describe how it works. The way he uses religion is also impressive, for instance, he uses the big bang to help visualize how it works throughout his artwork. He uses mythology throughout his artwork, for example, he applies it using mythological creatures. They all tie in to help create his artwork. Therefore his artwork can be described as out of this world. The way he portrays his artwork is described as making it visually stunning. He tries to make order out of chaos, for instance, he uses chaos theory throughout his art pieces. He also tries using the butterfly effect to help capture the mood and help forecast what is going on in his artwork. His work, The Line Shot (2009), uses his characteristic imagery to journey through space and time and applies it in a way that the viewer can easily see. He applies imagery throughout his artwork to help detail the creation to apocalypse, and from the subatomic to cosmic vastness. All his artwork ties in to some sort of religion or science perspective in a sense. Throughout this artwork, the imagination flows to help describe how science is applied to society and how religion is used to describe the way science and religion go hand-in-hand. His artwork can be seen today and is progressing every time. Finally, his artwork is impressive and can be described through the way he applies his artwork to science and religion, as well as, the mythological perspective.
Georgia O’Keeffe was part of the post World War I American Modernist Movement, which attempted to prove American exceptionalism. The movement was part of the growing emphasis on nationalism in this country. O’Keeffe was a leading female painter who was first well-known for her representational depictions of “flowers, leaves, shells, bones, and other architectural and natural subjects” but was also a huge influence upon abstraction as an American aesthetic (Lynes 1-2). O’Keefe was strongly influenced by the “curvilinear and organic vocabulary” of the Art Nouveau movement, by anti-traditional, individually expressive and sensual Japanese designs, and by photography’s use of space, perspective, and line (2-3).
abstraction White Rose (1927)
Georgia Totto O’Keeffe was born in November of 1887 to dairy farmers in Sun Prairie, Wisconsin. Her parents considered art to be an important part of her education from elementary to high school. In her early life, she was tutored in art at home and by a local watercolorist. Throughout high school in Madison and then in Chatham, Virginia, her teachers encouraged her art. After high school, she studied at the Art Institute of Chicago and then became part of the Art Students League in New York, where she first met Alfred Stieglitz who later became her husband. The Art League granted her a Still-Life Scholarship in 1907 to attend the Outdoor School at Lake George, New York. She spent two years in Chicago from 1908 to 1910 as a commercial artist prior to teaching art in Virginia, Texas, and South Carolina.
Untitled-West Lawn of UVA (ca. 1912)Abstraction (1946)
O’Keeffe began dabbling in abstracts with charcoal in 1915, and her husband-to-be included these as part of a group show in New York at his famous gallery 291 in late spring and summer of 1916; he arranged the first one-artist exhibition of her work in April of 1923, simply entitled Georgia O’Keeffe. Working with abstracts made O’Keeffe part of a small, elite American group of artists, and she considered abstraction to be her primary style. However, when critics misinterpreted her work as a representation of her sexuality, she turned to “recognizable subject matter” for which she is most known(www.okeeffemuseum.org/art–exhibitions).
Banyan Tree (1934)
Flowers as the subject of her paintings became an obsession beginning in 1924 and continued for decades. O’Keeffe created paintings of all sizes, and she emphasized the center of a flower and its sexuality. The critics really had fun with this, and later O’Keeffe would boldly tell the critics, and I loosely translate, “Get your minds out of the gutter, because my mind is not in there.”
Petunia No. 2 was first exhibited in the famous “Seven Americans” show organized by Stieglitz in 1925 and was one of O’Keeffe’s first large-scale paintings. The painting illustrates her fascination with the principles of photography and her respect for mentor Arthur Wesley Dow’s focus on composition as all-important. The influence of Asian expressionism is also indicated (www. okeeffemuseum.org/art–exhibitions). O’Keeffe’s mastery of color is highlighted by the “two-dimensionality (rather than focus on perspective)” in her flower studies (Stern 3).
(1924)
In December of 2011, O’Keeffe’s Canna Red and Orange (1926)was auctioned at Christie’s for $1.43 million. It was a a very colorful 20 X 16-inch oil on canvas.
This sale was totally eclipsed by Christie’s auction in 2001 of Calla Lilies with Red Anemone (1928) for an amazing $6.17 million. In an article in 1989, art expert Nicholas Callaway wrote that some found O’Keeffe’s flowers to be “sensual” and others found them to be “chaste,” but the most amazing fact is that the paintings were done by a woman “at a time when the art world was almost exclusively male.” One fact is painfully but blissfully true: controversy brings notoriety (“Big Art” 2).
(1928)
Leaving his wife of 25 years, Stieglitz moved in with O’Keeffe in 1918 and married her in 1924. Stieglitz, a prominent photographer, began a study in portraiture of O’Keeffe which spanned nearly three decades (www.okeeffemuseum.org/art–exhibitions). During this time, Stieglitz made more than 330 photographs of O’Keeffe, including her hands, face, feet, and torso. His aim was to show her humanity–the “strengths and vulnerabilities.” She was depicted both “clothed and nude, intimate and heroic, introspective and assertive.” He “almost singlehandedly defined her public persona for generations to come.” The pictures were radical with unique angles, lighting, close-ups, colors, and abstractions; and the world perceived O’Keeffe as radical, also (Celebrating three giants 2-3).
Georgia O’Keefe-hands (1918) photo by StieglitzGeorgia O’Keefe- Hand and Wheel (1933)
O’Keeffe and Stieglitz spent the seasons in New York City and at Lake George, but she spent brief times each year working in New Mexico. In New York, she worked with oils to capture her impressions of flowers, leaves, and trees. Throughout her career, she loved depicting trees as “living and lifeless.” Her love of photography influenced her to study scale, perspective, and color. She painted buildings with “optical distortion” (www.okeeffemuseum.org/art–exhibitions).
Above The Clouds (1962)
After her husband’s death in 1946, O’Keeffe settled down in New Mexico, living at her homes in Abiquiu and Ghost Ranch and also making trips into Navajo territory. The hills, cliffs, and mountains, the cedar and cottonwood trees, the dessert bones of her collection, the very simple architecture of the homes, and the various landscapes became the subjects of her work for the next 40 years. She was also inspired by traveling the world. During this time, she continued representational and abstract works using oil paints, watercolors, pastels, and charcoal. She continued to strive to build a “body of work whose aesthetic [was] modern in its precision, clean lines and elegant simplicity” (www.okeeffemuseum.org/art–exhibitions).
A Man From The Desert (1941)Rams Head Blue Morning Glory (1938)
Without a doubt, Georgia O’Keeffe was one of the most prolific painters in history, having painted over 2,000 pieces. Hundreds of her works are exhibited in more than 100 public art galleries in Asia, Europe, and North and Central America. President Gerald Ford presented her with the Medal of Freedom Award in 1977, and President Ronald Reagan awarded her the National Medal of Arts in 1985. Even though she is shown all over the world, O’Keeffe’s passion was a personal one: “I have but one desire as a painter–that is to paint what I see, as I see it, in my own way, without regard for the desires or taste of the professional dealer or the professional collector” (www.okeeffemuseum.org/art&exhibitions).
Anything (1916)Alligator Pears (1920)
Early in 1971, Georgia O’Keeffe lost her central vision and was left to struggle with limited peripheral vision. Surprisingly, she was able to work in watercolors and charcoal without any assistance until 1978 and with graphite until 1984. From 1972, she depended upon an assistant to help her paint with oils until 1977 when she had to give it up. Juan Hamilton, a potter-sculptor, was that assistant. Juan became her traveling companion, editor, and close friend until O’Keeffe’s death in 1986 at the age of 98 years old.
3 Zinnias (1921)
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“Big art in the big apple: two major New York auction houses put classic paintings front at
center at December sales.” Antiques Roadshow Insider Jan. 2011: 4+. General OneFile. Web.
3 Dec. 2014.
“Celebrating three giants of photography.” USA Today [Magazine] Jan. 2011:50+. General OneFile.
Web. 3 Dec. 2014.
Lynes, Barbara Buhler. “Georgia O’Keeffe: abstraction.” Veranda Mar. 2010: 24+. General
OneFile. Web. 3 Dec. 2014.
Stern, Fred. “Legendary modern American artists.” World and I Nov. 2013. General OneFile.
Edward Gorey was an American author and illustrator known for his nonsensical and macabre drawings. He was born in Chicago in 1925. His grandmother was a successful greeting card artist, and Gorey claims to have gotten his artistic abilities from her. He graduated from Harvard in 1950. He studied art for a short time at the Art Institute of Chicago.
After graduating, Gorey moved to New York City, where he got a job illustrating books such as Dracula and War of the Worlds.
His first personal piece that he wrote and illustrated himself was called “The Unstrung Harp.”
A friend of Gorey’s who owned a bookstore saw the potential of his works. He started selling his books and displaying his art in his gallery, and takes credit for helping Gorey to gain popularity.
Edward Gorey was an eccentric man. He enjoyed cats, sweaters, and ballet. He liked to watch TV commercials and considered them an art form. He was never interested in romance, and when questioned whether he was gay, he replied that if anything, he was asexual. Many of his works were considered children’s stories, though he did not intend them to be. He disliked children. He had many friends however and was quite social.
Gorey considered his pieces to be surrealist and nonsensical. He was known for his crosshatching ink illustrations, with characters and settings similar to Victorian, Edwardian, and jazz age styles. Many of his pieces were very macabre and dark, often dealing with death.
He published over 100 illustrated books. Some of the most popular were “The Gashlycrumb Tinines” which pokes fun at parental paranoia.
And “The Doubtful Guest.”
Gorey was a man of many talents. He loved the stage and designed stage props and costumes for his own plays and those of others. He won a Tony for best costume design for his production of Dracula. He created macrame puppets and would perform evening-length puppet shows. He experimented with books, making popups, miniature books, and stories that were entirely wordless.
Gorey also created the timeless opening for the PBS series Mystery!
Edward Gorey died in 2000. His house in Cape Cod is now a museum. There is a documentary being made about him that has been in process for over a decade. Here is a short clip of an interview with Gorey that was done for the documentary.
Paula Scher is currently working as a partner at Pentagram in New York and has been there since 1991. Scher began her career, however, in the 1970s and early 80s. Back then Scher worked as an art director and soon gained recognition for her work with typography. Scher earned a BFA from the Tyler School of Art and a Doctor of Fine Arts Honoris Causa from the Corcoran College of Art and Design. She is highly decorated with many awards and tons of recognition for her influential style. You might recognize a recent work of hers, the logo for Windows 8.
Paula Scher has worked a ton with typography, usually decorating it with themes from the past while merging it with more modern fonts and that is what boosted her career. She worked a long time for CBS as a creative director and has taught all over the world at some of the most prestigious institutions. I want to take a closer look at her maps however because those are something that Scher does for herself and not for her clients.
Above: “The World” 1998 – Acrylic – 56.5×77
Scher explains how the concept for her maps began on the backs of notebooks, she was just fooling around with the idea and then thought to herself that these maps would look marvelous if they were done huge. So she created them as large as she could, keeping with her motto: Make it bigger.
Paula Scher’s work is incredible, and her maps are breath taking and huge, she has achieved so much success with her work but it is her philosophy on art that I am attracted to. Scher is known for being an unabashed populist, she explains clearly how she likes to make art that can be enjoyed by everyone not just the limited demographic represented by the art community. Scher is quoted saying “I’d rather be The Beatles than Philip Glass – they’re both qualitative, it’s just that one has a broader appreciation from audiences than the other does.”
A second part of Scher’s philosophy that appeals to me is that she doesn’t seem to have any fear. No apprehension. In fact, quite the opposite of fear, Paula Scher embraces her mistakes.
“I try to force myself to grow by doing things I don’t know how to do very well. Sometimes I fail utterly at it; sometimes I make breakthroughs.” – Paula Scher
If you are interested in design and especially typography even slightly than Paula Scher is certainly someone you want to take a closer look at. This woman gained tremendous success by doing things her way, and continues today to follow that strategy which I find really impressive.
Hayao Miyazaki was born January 5th, 1941. He was the son of an warplane parts manufacturer, Katsuji Miyazaki, and also an animator, Akemi Ota. Throughout his childhood he experienced things such as World War II and his mother developing tuberculosis between 1947 and 1955. He soon after became interested in animation, but not what we know him to have done today.
(Miyazaki and his mother Akemi Ota)
Miyazaki became interested in anime after seeing Hakujaden (Legend of the White Snake). At this time he was actually interested in comic illustration instead of anime. The thing is though, he did not go to college for the arts. Instead he went to Gakushuin University for economics and political science which possibly increased his dislike for politics from what he learned. While there he was a part of the Children’s Literature Club which was what he enjoyed because he loved to please children.
(Hakujaden a.k.a. Legend of the White Snake)
His entry into the animation scene was in 1963 when he made motion pictures and some television series with Toei Animation. After being at the studio for some time he started to get very creative with his ideas, thus impressing the other animators, and soon pitching his ideas to the directors who then made him the head animator. This is where he met his wife, Akemi Ota, who was one of the animators at the studio. They were married in 1968, and in that same year “Prince of the Sun” was released. This was the first motion picture that Miyazaki played a major part in, which in turn skyrocketed his career as an animator.
Miyazaki’s first studio; Known for “Sailor Moon,” the original “Yu-Gi-Oh,” and various other famous animeMiyazaki’s first major film
Between the years of 1971 and 1978, Miyazaki experimented with his talents. He and another animator decided to attempt a motion picture that failed miserably. He then proceeded to Zuiyo Pictures where he was a scene designer. During this span he also dabbled in manga which were essentially graphic novels (not comic books). It was not until 1979 that he did anything truly noticeable, and that was the release of “Lupin III: The Castle of Cagliostro”, and then the release of his first famous manga “Nausicaä” soon after. The Tokuma Production company took notice of Miyazaki’s manga and recruited him to turn his manga into an anime.
Lupin III: The Castle of CagliostroNausicaa, Miyazaki’s famous manga
In 1984, “Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind” was released. It was not what someone would call a money maker, but it made enough money in the box office for Tokuma to create a new studio for Miyazaki. He called it “Studio Ghibli”, which he pronounced “jee-blee” which was Italian for dry Saharan wind and also the name of a World War I plane. This is the studio that has progressed through the years to be the flag ship and the top animation studio in the world. Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind may not have been a a big hit in the box office, but believe it or not it became the standard for anime from then on.
Nausicaa of the Valley of the WindStudio Ghibli (jee-blee) Logo
Studio Ghibli Filmography
Filmography
Miyazaki has been apart of 21+ motion pictures. I say 21+ because no one has a set number of films he has produced or been a part of, so it is a rough estimate on the low end. The following are some of those films.
Spirited Away
First up is one of my personal childhood favorites, “Spirited Away”. One of the more recent films releasing near the end of 2002.
From Google, and I quote, “Tale of the fanciful adventures of a ten-year-old girl named Chihiro, who discovers a secret world when she and her family get lost and venture through a hillside tunnel. When her parents undergo a mysterious transformation, Chihiro must fend for herself as she encounters strange spirits, assorted creatures and a grumpy sorceress who seeks to prevent her from returning to the human world.”
That is a basic description of the film “Spirited Away,” when the movie is packed full of morals, pain, and realism. To explain a Miyazaki film is comparable to explaining what it is to be in love. Anyone you ask will have a different opinion depending on how they interpret it. Spirited Away is a good example because it is closer to the present then most of Miyazaki’s films. One lesson the film teaches is that greed can be very destructive. Food for example can be a horrible thing yet can be what saves a person in the end. In the film, Haku gives Chihiro something to eat to gain her strength back so she does not disappear into the spirit world. Right before that, her parents had turned into pigs by the witch because they had “stolen” food, which portrays that we take things at an advantage in life like food.
BeforeAfterPrincess Mononoke
“Princess Mononoke” is a film Miyazaki did in 1997. This film may be one of the greatest works he has ever done all because of one reason. When released to the box offices, it was such a smash hit with japan that it grossed over $150 million+ leaving “E.T.” behind by a long shot. This attracted the first large audience from the U.S. The Film essentially opened the door for Studio Ghibli to expand around the world when Disney offered to get Tokuma Productions out of the financial drought they were having in exchange for the distribution rights to Studio Ghibli. It was completely up to Miyazaki, but since Tokuma made his dreams come true he happily accepted the deal.
Ghada Amer was born in Cairo, Egypt. She gained her MFA in painting at the Villa Arson EPIAR in Nice, France in 1989. Ghada now lives and works in New York where she continues to challenge the mind of society as well as the individuals that compose it with her thought provoking paintings, drawings, sculptures, and gardens. Ghada Amer’s art work is very intentionally feminine, seeking to empower woman in any way she can.
Intentionally feminine but not stereotypical, Ghada’s work is more honest than that. The artist attempts to portray women as they are, rather than how society expects them to be.
In her paintings Ghada uses mixed media such as acrylic paint, or gel, almost always accompanied by some type of embroidery. Again this is intentional on the artist’s part to convey a message about femininity to her audience.
“The history of art was written by men, in practice and in theory. Painting has a symbolic and dominant place inside this history, and in the twentieth century it became the major expression of masculinity, especially through abstraction. For me, the choice to be mainly a painter and to use the codes of abstract painting, as they have been defined historically, is not only an artistic challenge: its main meaning is occupying a territory that has been denied to women historically. I occupy this territory aesthetically and politically because I create materially abstract paintings, but I integrate in this male field a feminine universe: that of sewing and embroidery.” -Ghada Amer.
Often used to explore her own sexuality, Ghada creates many paintings and other art work demonstrating strong erotic themes. Some are more obvious than others, some are left for a more keen observer to find in the detail of the work.
In the above painting you see that Ghada has included well known Disney princesses, a theme found in many of her works. She creates a contrast between child and adulthood and at the same time shines light on the figures that young girls are modeling themselves after and what message the princesses convey to developing girls and boys.
As you can see the princesses resemble those in a coloring book, scribbled through by a young child. In the background you see these finely crafted embroidered figures of a nude woman. The artist did not specify what she meant by this but one interpretation that comes to mind is again an exploration of femininity and sexuality.
Other times Ghada creates this contrast without the use of princesses, merely by adding children to the background of an extremely erotic image of a nude woman.
These drawings and prints are used by Ghada, again to explore her own sexuality, but also to really emphasize that woman have it in themselves to explore their own bodies and their own sense of womanhood and sexuality. Ghada wants to empower woman and that is clear in her work.
Aside from her starkly feminine work in her drawings and paintings, Ghada also explores themes of love, war, and peace in her highly critical gardens.
The one I am highlighting is Ghada’s Peace Garden.
“Peace Garden consists of the universal peace symbol, first designed as a symbol for the Ban the Bomb movement in the 1950s, made of carnivorous plants. The garden is also part of a performance in which attendants serve live worms and crickets to visitors who in turn feed them to the plants. The use of carnivorous plants to construct a peace sign represents the shift in attitude of an earlier generation that once strongly promoted and used the peace symbol but then, over time, came to take causes for peace much less seriously.”
Overall it is clear that Ghada owns a passion for her work and her message. Some artists don’t like to be political, they make art for different reasons.. Ghada makes art for herself, she creates a message for others. Important, relevant messages that need to be heard as they address problems that people have faced both historically and in today’s modern world.
William Morris was born March 24, 1834 and he lived until October 3, 1896. Morris had studied Architecture in school, but he had always had the aspirations to be an artist and a painter. He went to the school of Oxford, and there he met a fellow painter, Edward Burne-Jones. This friendship led him to meet the Pre-Raphaelite brotherhood. After coming into contact with this group, he met a woman named Jane Burden. She was a favorite model of the Pre-Raphaelite. He married her in 1859, and soon after, he hired Philip Webb to build them a house. Webb built the house and achieved exactly what Morris was looking for. (Gothic Medieval themes) William Morris then spent around two years furnishing the inside. He did this mostly alone, but he did have a little help from the artists he had met along the way. They were so successful in the designing of the house that they decided to go into business together. Thus, in April 1861 Morris and his friends decided to start their own company. Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co. was the name and they produced all kinds of furnishings like: stained glass, furniture, embroidery, and wallpaper was added later since Morris could not find any that he liked enough to put in his own house. Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co. had a large impact on the design and décor of churches and houses well into the 20th century.
William Morris is mainly known for his designs on wallpapers and fabrics. He applied the concepts and values of fine art to commercial products which has influenced designs even now. Morris said that the “diligent study of Nature” was very important because nature was the best example of the perfect design that God had created. He based many of his works off of this idea. He also did not like the art of the age he was in, at the time there was a decline in social and artistic standards. He was always encouraging his fellow artists to be inspired by the past during the Gothic and Middle ages. Morris thought that at those times, artists created and expressed their creativity to glorify God and did the best to their ability. Most of his works are very “flowery” and nature inspired because of these beliefs. Most of his classic designs are still available to be made into wallpaper or textiles. William Morris’ goal was to draw the natural forms he saw outdoors and bring those shapes inside homes.
One of Morris’ favorite pieces was the Trellis (1862) which was pattern based overlaid with flowers. He saw this at the Red House (where he lived). Philip Webb, his contractor, added the insects and birds, seen on this artwork, at a later time. Morris liked this piece so much; he actually used it as wallpaper to decorate his own room. He also got into printing on books. He founded the Kelmscott Press in 1891. William used the style of medieval times for the title pages, borders, and typefaces. It was recorded Morris saying, “I began printing books with the hope of producing some which would have a definite claim to beauty, while at the same time they should be easy to read and should not dazzle the eye……I found I had to consider chiefly the following things: the paper, the form of the type, the relative spacing of the letters, the words, and the lines; and lastly the position of the printed matter on the page.”
