1. The two videos I picked were the one on Matisse & Picasso, and the one on Expressionism. I found the videos difficult to choose this time. I have a passing interest in everything discussed, but no real motivations/feeling about it - kinda wish there had been a video on Impressionism. I chose the Matisse/Picasso one because I am stimulated by Picasso's art and seeing his work compared with another sounded intriguing. I picked the video on Expressionism because it's one of the art styles I'm not very familiar with and I really wanted a little more information. I was interested in Dada & Surrealism too, but I know more about those so I went with expressionism.
2. The Matisse/Picasso video was very much an overview of the lives & friendship of the two artists. It worked very hard to show the social & political climate of the times, really focusing on the human element as it relates to art. The video really seemed to want to show the way these artists created, and compared/contrasted the two works frequently. The Expressionism video, by contrast, was focused solely on the artworks produced under this genre, and analyzed them while giving a very brief biography of the artist & the time they lived in. This video took multiple works/artists and broke them down to show what was behind them rather than bothering with individual artists.
3. The Matisse/Picasso video was able to give me a broader look into the artists' lives than the book did. The book has only a brief, one-page biography on both artists, though it takes more time throughout the book to look at/analyze their art. The book looked at a lot of Picasso's art in particular in chapters before, as examples for whatever we had been talking about. The video gave a more complete picture of the two artists as artists and showed the creative processes a little more. The Expressionism video was meant to expound upon what Expressionism is - or at least I thought that's what the video would do. I suppose I understand Expressionism a little better now, but the book's definition made me think more abstractly than the examples I was shown in the video. I was under the impression that Expressionism was a lot like Postmodern Poetry; if the focus is to be on the expression of emotions, then I did not expect to see very solid forms or coherency in the paintings in the way that I did.
4. The Matisse/Picasso video was alright - the narrator was strong and almost mystical in a way. He seemed to really want to draw the reader into a story about these artists, even if it's history and you kind of already know what happens. The Expressionism video was much better. Even though the narrator wasn't as strong, he was very proper and did a good job describing the paintings and what was going on. Additionally, I enjoyed the way this video was filmed/edited. They did a good job filming the paintings so that I could actually see the analysis come to life. I can't always do that when artwork is broken down.
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