Tala Madani is an Iranian artist who uses a variety of mediums and art styles ranging from sketches and paintings to stop motion animations. Madani’s works are often satirical pieces that show how various aspects of society are in contrast with each other. Her pieces also explore various ideas about society, such as the way certain cultures are perceived, as well as artistic ideas and practices, like how light is portrayed and the importance of her caricatures and symbols.
Oven III, Oil on linen, 38 x 30 x 1 1/4 in, 2018.
Madani makes much of her works so that they entertain her and her audience while speaking on key themes that she finds important. One idea that Madani includes in many of her pieces is male interaction with society and with others. Madani’s pieces often have male figures interacting with other male figures or children, and she uses them to satarize the things that men do, analyzing both ideas that men have and social interactions that men are involved in. Although she uses them while depicting some of the more childish or absurd interactions in society, or in depicting other issues in a more surreal form, she has said that the caricatures of men she uses in her painting are not meant to belittle men, but to interact with them through her art.
Untitled, oil on linen, 18 x 24 x 1 1/4 in, 2015.Smiley Clean, Oil on linen, 16 1/8 x 14 1/4 x 3/4 in, 2015.
Much of Tala Madani’s inspiration comes from her upbringing. Madani was born in Iran and moved to the U.S when she was 15 years old. Madani then lived in Oregon for a while and experienced how people in rural areas of the U.S. perceived people from Iran. The experience opened her eyes to different perspectives, and the blending of the different cultures helped inspire many of Madani’s works.
Grand Entrance, Oil on linen, 15 x 12 in, 2012
The process that Madani goes through when making a new piece or series involves her making various sketches while pondering various ideas. Madani uses different kinds of “sketching” while she is making a new artistic work. Madani makes sketches of the ideas of her pieces and of the pieces themselves and sets them up in a way that is sometimes like a storyboard and other times like a collection of ideas that may or may not be used in the creation of another series. In addition to a regular sketchbook, Madani paints “sketches” that she also uses to quickly record ideas, and will pull them from a rack of painted sketches is she decides to continue expanding on whatever idea those paintings hold.
In a recent series, Madani explored ideas surrounding the iconic yellow smiley face. In her exploration of the face, she noticed that the face had a sort of force surrounding it. Madani saw that the face represented big ideas like peace, but that it also represented a certain conformity because of its simplicity, recognizability, and ubiquity. She used those ideas as a platform to make a series that dealt with ideas of conformity and cultism.
Window Pane, Oil on linen, 16 1/8 x 12 1/8 x 1 5/8 in 2015.Love Doctor, Oil on linen, 16 x 14 1/4 x 3/4 in, 2015.Goldon Pour, Oil on linen, 16 1/4 x 14 x 7/8 in, 2015
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 anime
Miyazaki’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 Cagliostro
Nausicaa, 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 Wind
Studio 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.
Before
After
Princess 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.
Paul Noble was born in 1963. He is a brittish visual artist and was nominated for the turner prize in 2012. He is an english painter and installation artist. Paul completed his degree in fine arts at humberside college of higher education in1986. Afterwards, he moved to london where he became a founding member of an artist run gallery City Racing. Here he held his first exhibitions which involved small drawings and paintings of dream-like worlds. He used new worlds of drawings in a place between hilarity and despair. His most notable drawings of nobson newtown has takin more than half of his life. He starts all of his drawings off at the top left hand corner and creates as he goes through.
Nobson newton was his most recognized work. It was all on a fictional city that he worked on for over ten years. Series of large scale pencil drawings made up this city and resembled a form of soviet bloc housing. he never portrays people in these either. Some of the notable ones were the Nobspital and Nobson central.
Welcome to Nobson
In this drawing you see mounds of stone topped with rocks that give it the same look as a desert. It causes the eye to keep looking at all the countless stones. This drawing uses flat lighting and unchanging angles of shadows. Everywhere you look you can see lurking geometry, even in the sun.
Nobspital.
Lidonab is a large penil drawing done on a piece of paper over 4 meters across,or about 13 feet. This is also part of the series drawing of nobson newtown. The fact no inhabitants are in the picture gives it the eerie feeling of a ghost town.
AH.
Playframe is a drawing done by pencil that shows a childrens climbing frame. It is a realistic drawing using line work and shadow effects which give it depth.
Family is Infinity portrays another part of newtown, this uses an array of circular clumps and a ghostly look to it.
Aside from all of the drawings noble did, he also did some sculptures. When looking at these, the first thing that jumps act that they look like turds. All of his sculptures give this look. In this one it shows a turd sitting on top of another one.
Born in Casablanca, Morocco 1947, Jacob El Hanani grew up in Israel, which shows in his work. He uses the tradition of micrography, which is using Hebrew letters to form a geometric, representational, and abstract designs.
Through this careful repetition of small marks, which can also be Hebrew letters written over and over, creating designs in ink on paper or canvas. The images are drawn without magnifying, in order to avoid straining his eyes, he breaks about every 10 minutes. In the end his work is extremely detailed and has the appearance of a pattern from a far.
The reason for drawing micrographic started when he was ten years old, him and his class were being punished for being too noisy. The teacher made them copy the “Song of Deborah” from the Bible about forty times. Jacob El Hanani did not want to waste forty pieces of paper, so he wrote extremely small and put twenty on one side and twenty on the other, which was only a page long.
El Hanani is very discipline and takes the time to perform hundreds and thousands of tiny marks that speaks to the viewer through awareness of time . When his work is looked at from a far it is like a sea of gray and silver shades and has a rhythmic feel to it.
Jacob has been awarded three awards The American Academy of Arts and Letters, Purchase award in 2003, Tiffany Award in 1999 and American Israel Cultural Foundation award in 1969. He has done solo exhibits since 1975 and selected group exhibits since 1976 and other selected exhibits .
“A man has to persist when he wants to conquer” Jacob El Hanani .
Maurits Cornelis Escher (1898-1972) is one of the world’s most famous graphic artists. His art is enjoyed by millions of people all over the world, as can be seen on the many web sites on the internet.
He is most famous for his so-called impossible structures, such as Ascending and Descending, Relativity, his Transformation Prints, such as Metamorphosis I, Metamorphosis II and Metamorphosis III, Sky & Water I or Reptiles. I wrote this….
![ShowImage[1]](https://i2.wp.com/markmcleod.org/wp_clevelandstateart/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/ShowImage1.jpg?resize=311%2C187)
