I'm not really sure what to write here...
I started out by watching the videos for this module anyway, intending to get the throwaway work done first. The first video - the one on West Coast Pop Art - inspired a Pop Art exhibit idea.
I had already been toying with an Impressionist theme - from the time I read about the project I had been thinking about an Impressionism theme. I am not kidding when I say it's my favorite movement; I have had a fascination with the works of Monet since I was little - I have a huge coffee table book containing a biography and all his works, plus received calendars of his paintings until I was a teenager (they no longer had any works I hadn't seen.)
I ended up with a third idea when I randomly asked my fiance what he might do as an exhibit. So I thought wrote out three different exhibits:
- An Impressionism exhibit focusing on the changing nature of light
- A Pop Art exhibit looking at the evolution of the form, from the founders to "lowbrow"
- An exhibit looking at the history of water as a subject matter for art, from early civilization to now
My paper ideas were then passed around my household and the consensus was on the Impressionist exhibit (with one vote for Pop art, and one torn between Impressionism and water.)
Now, I came to the idea of light as the focus of the Impressionism theme simply by refreshing myself on the basis of the movement. I wanted an Impressionism theme because I wanted a showcase for Monet - my favorite artist - but I didn't want to it be just about him. One of the goals of this movement was to study light as naturally as possible - to recreate the way light changes a subject. To this end, Impressionists frequently painted the same subject matter over and over, but at different times of the day or during different seasons.
That's where I got the idea for the exhibit. I would showcase different Impressionist painters, and where I could I would pick paintings in a series reflecting directly the goal they were chasing - the changing nature of light. All paintings chosen would be a study of how light plays on the subject, whether part of a series or not.
I picked the PowerPoint format for a couple of reasons. First, it is designed to look like an art gallery space, and second, it gave a few choices of theme colors and the color palette for this one seemed most in line with Impressionist choice of colors. I've also refrained from using black in the PowerPoint (except for the text of the body) - much like the painters themselves refused to use the color. I picked the heading/title font because it looked like the way a painter might sign their work. Colors were picked to be pretty and complimentary of the paintings. Regular text is in a font people can read - I'm fond of Times New Roman.
Sunday, December 4, 2016
Thursday, December 1, 2016
Art Curation Videos
1. Key Concepts
West Coast Pop Art: Concepts for this video included the definition of "lowbrow" as an art theory/movement - what was being struggled against in the art world. "Lowbrow" was meant to be the opposite of "highbrow" - the term for the elite art scene. In the eyes of these artists, art had become too intelligent, to uppity, and too hard to understand. It wasn't made for the everyday audience, and that's who they wanted to appeal to. It also related "lowbrow" art back to other art forms/schools like surrealism and pop art. The other major concepts concerned the evolution of the "lowbrow" art form - the pioneers of the form, where their inspirations came from, and the types of art they created & influenced. These artists were very much inspired by the culture that emerged after WWII in the late 1940s and 1950s - the suburban & specifically West Coast surfer/skater cultures that emerged. These nostalgic cultural influences merged with the uneasy political climate of the 1960s & 1970s, and expressed itself in the evolution of animation, comics, and record cover artwork. The video also commented on the broad influence this West Coast movement had, inspiring artists up to the north in Canada.
Tate Modern: The main concept of this video was a showcase of the newly remodeled Tate Museum of Modern Art. It highlighted some goals of the new administration, such as the effort to include more diverse artists - more women, more artists form non-Western countries, etc. It highlighted the expansion of the collection; how the museum was trying to expand what was considered as art, not just installations but digital, interactive pieces and a performance art space. The video even gave a little peak at the warehouse that stores the pieces that are not currently on display. The video also worked hard to show how the museum was trying to remain accessible to a large audience despite being so vast as to be intimidating.
An Acquiring Mind: The main concept of this video was the Metropolitan Museum of Art (the Met) and its longest-running director. One of the focuses of the video was a portrait of the director (Philippe de Montebello), how he got to his position and what the focus of his administration was. It spotlighted a bunch of works that distinguished the collection and how this man obtained them. It also showed the broader work of the museum in how they go about getting permission to acquire pieces for the collection, how pieces are restored and otherwise conserved, and how gallery/exhibition spaces are physically set up.
2. Relation to Project
West Coast Pop Art: This particular video could be helpful - it was really interesting and inspiring because I am already a fan of pop art in general and found this particular subsect of it to be graphically pleasing. I am toying with the idea of doing a pop art theme for my curation project, but as I am unsure of my theme, this video may or may not be helpful.
Tate Modern: This video certainly got me thinking about gallery space and how to use it. The Tate is really vast and they had to choose exactly how to fill each space, even if that space was just going to have paintings. The way the works are set up in each room is important, because not everyone likes the same kind of art but you want everyone to find something of value in the rooms that they visit. It was a good lesson on how to make art available to everyone without seeming too elitist about it.
An Acquiring Mind: Now this video is super helpful for the project. It adds onto the Tate lessons about gallery space and exhibition set up. In addition, it makes you think really hard about what artworks to pick and why; how they are going to work with one another, what the flow of the exhibit would then look like, what the relations to the pieces are/how obvious you want to make that.
3. Opinion of Video
West Coast Pop Art: This video was very entertaining. There wasn't a lot of narration; it was mostly interviews with art history experts/artists/critics. These interview pieces were very interesting, engaging and even humorous, containing an awful lot of personal experience/encounters with this particular school of art. The interviews were cut away from for shots of artwork examples relating to the particular aspect of the movement that was being discussed. It was very colorful, showing not just gallery examples of artwork but pointing out artwork that I was more familiar with; aspects of culture like cartoons/comics (I'm a fan of comic artist Robert Crumb from a while back now), drug culture, and music. The video did a good job of showing a movement driven by a rapidly changing culture, while influencing/changing it at the same time.
Tate Video: This video was also very entertaining, though set up more like a television news article than a documentary. This video had two narrators of sorts that took us through the pieces of the video. The female reporter was very active - she was the one that took the audience on the tour of the gallery, and asked questions about the rooms and the exhibits of the administration. She was very friendly and accessible, asking questions that allowed the admin to go into detail about the topic. The male was usually cut to when more complex questions - questions about what is considered art and how should the Tate go about collecting/displaying/etc - were being asked. He was less friendly and more professional - reminded me a lot of the old 60 Minutes reporters. I also enjoyed how the video talked to some of the lesser known artists that were going to be displayed - it wasn't just about the museum stuff, it was about the art too.
An Acquiring Mind: This video wasn't quite as entertaining as the other two. The narrator was very engaging and had a sweet voice, but the topics being discussed were dryer than in the other two videos. I did really enjoy it when they talked about the artwork in the collection; both the highlighted coups of the collection and the conservation pieces that were shown were fascinating, and I found the whole conservation section very fascinating on its own. I noticed the video tried to tell a story of the Met and this director, but because it focused so much on the behind-the-scenes work life of a museum and less on the artwork, this storytelling mode made the video lag a little.
West Coast Pop Art: Concepts for this video included the definition of "lowbrow" as an art theory/movement - what was being struggled against in the art world. "Lowbrow" was meant to be the opposite of "highbrow" - the term for the elite art scene. In the eyes of these artists, art had become too intelligent, to uppity, and too hard to understand. It wasn't made for the everyday audience, and that's who they wanted to appeal to. It also related "lowbrow" art back to other art forms/schools like surrealism and pop art. The other major concepts concerned the evolution of the "lowbrow" art form - the pioneers of the form, where their inspirations came from, and the types of art they created & influenced. These artists were very much inspired by the culture that emerged after WWII in the late 1940s and 1950s - the suburban & specifically West Coast surfer/skater cultures that emerged. These nostalgic cultural influences merged with the uneasy political climate of the 1960s & 1970s, and expressed itself in the evolution of animation, comics, and record cover artwork. The video also commented on the broad influence this West Coast movement had, inspiring artists up to the north in Canada.
Tate Modern: The main concept of this video was a showcase of the newly remodeled Tate Museum of Modern Art. It highlighted some goals of the new administration, such as the effort to include more diverse artists - more women, more artists form non-Western countries, etc. It highlighted the expansion of the collection; how the museum was trying to expand what was considered as art, not just installations but digital, interactive pieces and a performance art space. The video even gave a little peak at the warehouse that stores the pieces that are not currently on display. The video also worked hard to show how the museum was trying to remain accessible to a large audience despite being so vast as to be intimidating.
An Acquiring Mind: The main concept of this video was the Metropolitan Museum of Art (the Met) and its longest-running director. One of the focuses of the video was a portrait of the director (Philippe de Montebello), how he got to his position and what the focus of his administration was. It spotlighted a bunch of works that distinguished the collection and how this man obtained them. It also showed the broader work of the museum in how they go about getting permission to acquire pieces for the collection, how pieces are restored and otherwise conserved, and how gallery/exhibition spaces are physically set up.
2. Relation to Project
West Coast Pop Art: This particular video could be helpful - it was really interesting and inspiring because I am already a fan of pop art in general and found this particular subsect of it to be graphically pleasing. I am toying with the idea of doing a pop art theme for my curation project, but as I am unsure of my theme, this video may or may not be helpful.
Tate Modern: This video certainly got me thinking about gallery space and how to use it. The Tate is really vast and they had to choose exactly how to fill each space, even if that space was just going to have paintings. The way the works are set up in each room is important, because not everyone likes the same kind of art but you want everyone to find something of value in the rooms that they visit. It was a good lesson on how to make art available to everyone without seeming too elitist about it.
An Acquiring Mind: Now this video is super helpful for the project. It adds onto the Tate lessons about gallery space and exhibition set up. In addition, it makes you think really hard about what artworks to pick and why; how they are going to work with one another, what the flow of the exhibit would then look like, what the relations to the pieces are/how obvious you want to make that.
3. Opinion of Video
West Coast Pop Art: This video was very entertaining. There wasn't a lot of narration; it was mostly interviews with art history experts/artists/critics. These interview pieces were very interesting, engaging and even humorous, containing an awful lot of personal experience/encounters with this particular school of art. The interviews were cut away from for shots of artwork examples relating to the particular aspect of the movement that was being discussed. It was very colorful, showing not just gallery examples of artwork but pointing out artwork that I was more familiar with; aspects of culture like cartoons/comics (I'm a fan of comic artist Robert Crumb from a while back now), drug culture, and music. The video did a good job of showing a movement driven by a rapidly changing culture, while influencing/changing it at the same time.
Tate Video: This video was also very entertaining, though set up more like a television news article than a documentary. This video had two narrators of sorts that took us through the pieces of the video. The female reporter was very active - she was the one that took the audience on the tour of the gallery, and asked questions about the rooms and the exhibits of the administration. She was very friendly and accessible, asking questions that allowed the admin to go into detail about the topic. The male was usually cut to when more complex questions - questions about what is considered art and how should the Tate go about collecting/displaying/etc - were being asked. He was less friendly and more professional - reminded me a lot of the old 60 Minutes reporters. I also enjoyed how the video talked to some of the lesser known artists that were going to be displayed - it wasn't just about the museum stuff, it was about the art too.
An Acquiring Mind: This video wasn't quite as entertaining as the other two. The narrator was very engaging and had a sweet voice, but the topics being discussed were dryer than in the other two videos. I did really enjoy it when they talked about the artwork in the collection; both the highlighted coups of the collection and the conservation pieces that were shown were fascinating, and I found the whole conservation section very fascinating on its own. I noticed the video tried to tell a story of the Met and this director, but because it focused so much on the behind-the-scenes work life of a museum and less on the artwork, this storytelling mode made the video lag a little.
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