Tuesday, October 26, 2010

The Good Life Photomontage Information Paragraph and Lyrics

The song I chose to make a photomontage of is the Good Life by Kanye West featuring T-Pain. One of the repeated lyrics in the choruses of the song is, “I’ma get on this TV momma” so I took a picture of my TV and displayed an image from the Good Life music video, showing that Kanye and T-Pain are on TV. In the third verse of the song, there are two lines that mention a plane, “Have you ever popped champagne on a plane” and “whipped it out, she said I never seen snakes on a plane” so I took a picture of a model plane I have and placed it in the sky. And in the previous sentence, the line from the song I first quoted mentions champagne so I got a picture from the Internet of a champagne bottle and I took a picture of one of my champagne glasses with gingerale in it which I used to represent champagne. The TV and the champagne need to be on a surface so I placed an image of a glass table I got from the Internet. And I used an image of a pool for the background because when we think of someone who’s living the good life, they have their own pool. And while normally you wouldn’t have a TV next to a pool because of possible water damage, if you’re a rich person living the good life, you can afford to constantly replace a damaged TV with a new one. So for my photomontage, I took the objects mentioned in the song and placed them on the background image of a pool to represent the good life.


Click to enlarge.
(Lyrics from album booklet.)


Thursday, October 21, 2010

Image Critique: Burst Unity




Burst Unity

Hannah Hoch

1955


My initial reaction to this photomontage was that it was a beautiful, abstract piece of art but I didn’t know what it was. I have no idea what the objects are in this photomontage. What I see in this photomontage are many unknown objects, lines, shapes and colours combined to create this piece of art.

The elements and principles of design in this photomontage are balance, dominance/emphasis, contrast, shape and colour. The balance in this photomontage is symmetrical because if you were to draw a line down the middle, it would be visually equal on both sides. Dominance/emphasis is found in this photomontage because all the objects are placed in the center, making it the focal point. Contrast is found through shape and colour. The shapes contrast with each other because of their different sizes. Some are large and some are small. Contrast in colour is found with white on the dark blue, dark blue on the lighter blue and dark blue contrasting with the light green. There are both geometric and organic shapes in this photomontage. The organic shapes are all of the unknown objects in the center. The geometric shapes are the rectangles in the photomontage and the background shape with the top half being dark blue and the bottom half being light green. The primary colours red as seen on that rectangular-ish shape at the top, blue, both light and dark, as seen in the background and in the shape on the left and at the bottom and the rectangle towards the bottom, and yellow as seen on the shape on the left beside the blue shape, are in the photomontage. The secondary colours orange, as seen on the shapes in the bottom left of the center, green as seen on the top left shape and in the bottom half of the background, and violet as seen in the shape in the center and the bottom right rectangle, are in it. And the tertiary colours yellow-orange as seen in the orange shapes in the bottom left of the center, blue-green as seen in the background where the dark blue and light green merge, and red-violet as seen in the the rectangular-ish shape at the top are in the photomontage as well. The artists choice of objects/materials are all unknown, unidentifiable objects and this photomontage doesn’t have a location. What grabs my attention in this photomontage is the center focal point. All the objects seem to point to or come from this point. It has a black hole effect where either things are being sucked into a central point or things are coming out from a central point.

The theme of this photomontage is aesthetic beauty of these images put together. It’s really hard to see any moods or emotions in this photomontage. I can’t see any happiness or sadness or any other emotions in this photomontage. You can’t really tell from this image alone what it’s about or what it means but the photomontage is called, “Burst Unity” so maybe all these objects, shapes and lines bursted out from a central point which is where the objects seem to come out from. This work was created because the artist, Hannah Hoch, wanted to create a beautiful photomontage by combining several shapes, lines and colours. Based on this piece of art, I’d say the artist’s view of the world is beautiful because of a combination of various objects and colours. For example, in nature we have a combination of green trees, blue water, yellow sunlight, red roses etc... that can give us beautiful scenery. Hannah Hoch never explicitly said why she created “Burst Unity” but all throughout her art career, she worked hard to learn the techniques of photomontage so she could show other artists the things photomontages were capable of, a medium that artists lost interest in during the 1920s and was discarded in favour of other mediums. In her photomontages, she worked hard to create an image which looked modern and sophisticated and I think “Burst Unity” is one of her photomontages that best show this and that’s what her intent of this artwork probably was.

Hannah Hoch created the photomontage “Burst Unity” so she could show that through the use of the medium photomontage, she could combine shapes and lines that are simple on their own and combine them to create a complex, modern and sophisticated piece of art. My thoughts and feelings about this photomontage haven’t changed after knowing what her intent with this probably was because I always thought this had a modern, sophisticated and abstract look which seemingly is what the artist was trying to communicate. I don’t interpret the photomontage any differently now. I still see it as an aesthetically beautiful/pleasing piece of abstract artwork. What I learned from “Burst Unity” is that a combination of simple shapes and objects can create a modern and complex image which I should try to experiment with when creating art.

Works Cited
Cut And Paste: Hannah Hoch. 2007. 10 Oct 2010.

Wednesday, October 6, 2010

Less Is More

My intent as an artist for these pumpkins was to emphasize the idea of "Less Is More." As you can see, the detail in the physical characteristics of the first pumpkin gets simplified through cropping/zooming in and so the pumpkin is shown much closer. The second pumpkin still shows part of the outline of the pumpkin whereas the third, fourth, fifth and sixth do not. The fourth is shown in black and white. The colour brown is shown in the fifth. And the colour orange is shown in the sixth.


Click to enlarge.

Tuesday, October 5, 2010

Symbolism in Art

These are 20 symbols from around the world:

1. All-Seeing Eye - A symbol representing spiritual sight, inner vision, higher knowledge, and insight into occult mysteries. It's found on the American $1 bill.




2. Star of David - This is a symbol of Jewish identity and Judaism. In Hebrew it is known as the Shield of David.


File:260px-Star of David.png


3. Yin and Yang - A Chinese symbol where the outer circle represents everything and the white and black shapes within represent the interaction of two energies, called yin (black) and yang (white), which cause everything to happen.


yin-yang.jpg yin and yang image by tedjjjj

4. The Egyptian Ankh - The ancient Egyptians saw this as a symbol of life. Today, it's also a symbol that represents the cross to Christians.


ankh.png Ankh image by Jack-a-Dack1

5. DUAFE (wooden comb) - An African symbol representing beauty, femininity and cleanliness. African women used this comb to lock their hair.



6. Three leaf clover - This represents the trinity; the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.



7. Four leaf clover - This represents good luck.



8. Deepam - In India, people worship flame or deepam because it represents the purest of the pure because it consumes all impurities but still remains pure itself.


karthigai-deepam.png image by d-k-photos

9. Dragon - In Eastern Asia, people believed that a dragon had power to help them against more hostile spiritual forces while in medieval Europe, it was a symbol representing dangerous and evil.




10. Swastika - A symbol representing racism and "white supremacy" of neo-nazis.






11. Dreamcatcher - American Indians believe that by hanging a dreamcatcher over their bed, the webs on the insides will block bad dreams, and good dreams will pass through the center.





12. Maple Leaf - This is the national symbol of Canada. Maple leaves are a beautiful and iconic part of Canada's landscape. And the Natives living in Canada are said to be the first to discover maple syrup.


Site - http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/fd/Maple_Leaf.svg/310px-Maple_Leaf.svg.png















13. Red Paper Chinese Lanterns - These symbolize luck in Chinese culture.















14. Angel - A symbol of good and evil spirits in religions all around the world.

















15. Crystal Ball - Used for divination (fortunetelling, scrying, clairvoyance etc...)















16. Bat - A symbol of good fortune in the East, but in medieval Europe, a symbol representing demons and spirits.
















17. Circle (sun disk, sacred hoop, ring) - An ancient and universal symbol of unity, wholeness, infinity, the goddess, female power and the sun.
















18. Cow - It symbolized the sky goddess Hathor to Egyptians, enlightenment to Buddhists, one of the highest and holiest stages of transmigration (reincarnation) to Hindus.


















19. Dove - In Christianity, the Dove represents the Holy Spirit as well as peace.


















20. Infinity - In ancient India and Tibet, it represented perfection, dualism, and unity between male and female. In modern times, it became a secular mathematical symbol for infinity in numbers, time or space.