Chuck Close

Chuck Close is an American painter and photographer who is known for his photo-realism and massive paintings. I first heard of him on the Colbert Report and was intrigued by his style of art. He creates paintings by using a process called gridding. This process basically involves composing a painting out of small blocks, and he makes each block an abstract art piece. What I found interesting about him is that despite having Prosopagnosia, which is also known as face blindness, he specializes in portraits. He claims that he didn't know his wife's face two years in to his marriage. He remembers faces by flattening them into the paintings that he creates, as the face blindness is caused by errant depth perception. Click here for photo gallery. Here are some of his paintings that I liked:

Progression of Art Styles

As we all know art styles have radically changed over the centuries. But it was only until I actually looked up the progression of art styles in history that I realized how many different types of art styles there are, and that's just in painting. We have touched on a few of the styles in class, such as cubism. This style was sparked by the invention of the camera, now people could see images from any perspective that the camera could reach. Cubism takes this idea and represents many points of view on the same image, creating a distorted image of the original subject. And it is the introduction of a new view point that always sparks new styles. Another example is Abstract art, this was created because some artists believed that there was no need to represent real objects. Instead they chose to change the view point to interpret colors and shapes that are not recognizable and portray their message through vaguer images. What I found interesting is that there have been no radical style shifts in art in the 21st century.

One art style that i found interesting is Kinetic Art. This style explores how things look when they move and usually involves parts that are designed to set in motion by some internal mechanism. This type of art developed in response to technological advances, using motors and sensors to create motion. This is especially interesting to me as I am majoring in mechanical engineering, the idea of machines being piece of art is intriguing.The motion cannot be captured by images, and is better viewed in videos.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WcR7U2tuNoY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=50eWUdyKGxE

MoMA website

We have recently been discussing museums and focusing on the web design choices these museums make. Most of the museum websites have very interactive websites that have high quality graphics that work smoothly and integrate with the art to present a seamless user interface for viewing art and searching for exhibits. One website that is a good example of such seamless integration is the Museum of Modern Art website. This website has a vast number of galleries for view online, but they have managed these galleries to make easy to navigate and enjoy the galleries. In terms of visual design the website embodies the word clean, they use light colors highlighted with brighter colors that pop and everything is linear and structured. I believe this visual design has been chosen to reflect modern art which follows the same aesthetics. One thing I did notice about this website thought, is that every page you visit has a button to send you to the MoMA shop. This gives me the feeling that MoMA is very retail oriented.

Stolen Art

Whenever I see art in popular media it is usually about art being stolen from museums, but the fact is that much of the art in museums are stolen from other people in the fist place. Most of this art is attained from colonization or as wartime loots. An example of wartime looting is during the World War 2. The Nazis stole art from Jewish families and other victims of the expansion of Nazi Germany. I was surprised to see that I recognized some of the art that was stolen. There was the “Portrait of Dr. Gachet” by Vincent Van Goh and also a sculpture by Michelangelo called “Madonnas of Bruges”. 

This is a controversial topic in the art world. Should we return the art to its original and, some would say, rightful owners? Some museums sympathize with this view and return most of the art, although sometimes keeping important ones. It is a complicated matter, especially when the art in question has been engraved into a new society and embedded into its culture.

Museums

I had never thought about how art is displayed to us could affect our view of it, it seems like a basic idea but is a very interesting one. O’Doherty makes the point that what we are viewing in museums is in fact something that has been editorialized, just like a magazine, by a curator. Many choices have to be made in displaying a exhibition, the art pieces have to be displayed in an organized fashion in order to make a coherent point and to educate the average viewer, how much space does each painting have for itself. The environment in which you view art is important and definitely impacts your view of the art.

This can be exemplified by examining different environments. The one I am most familiar with is the contemporary design used in museums today, this is the design in which I viewed the titian Exhibit and the Dali Exhibit. The contemporary designs main objective is to reduce distraction and let the viewer focus solely on the art and its message. Many art pieces reside in places of worship such as cathedrals, here every architectural detail is tweaked to emphasize grandeur. Grand arches outline murals, creating windows into important religious events. Murals are placed on huge domed ceilings often lined with gold paint. Here we can clearly see that the environment influences our view of the art.