Blog Assignment 4-Respond Gaze

When talking about gaze, I think it's something can be explained as an action expresses a psychological power relationship between gazed and gazer. No matter male, female or homo, people are always gaze from recorded photographies, images, painting or something else and some sort of photographies and artworks are repersent naked lady. And these works give gazer a voyeuristic dimension and male group are always the gazer, female group and their bodies are gazed. Viewer should looking at the relationship of the objects appear in a work. Below there is a example about explaination of the relationship between gazed and gazer.

From the art photography Vanessa Beecroft, VB 50, by photographer and designer Vanessa Beecroft. We can see lots of black, yellow and white skin naked women are standing on the ground with black boots, red wigs. And with the white interesting desgined building, this picture looks like a tableau and it's reminiscent of multicolored culture and societies. This is not just a naked women photography, however, the women's act of exhibiting has a power of letting gazer to reduce a naked woman to a object and increasing voyeuristic watching to secondary thing. For Vanessa Beecroft, those girls are materials, are a part of her visual components to organize her own visual language. Viewers will pay more attention on the women's height, dimensions, types, colors, even their emotion instead of just browsing on surface of the image. So, the power of the image represents which can inspire gazer is the culture and stories behind the naked bodies. To gaze is to analyse the visual component, color and materials artists use and consider the background of naked bodies.

I researched more information about Beecroft, and what interests me most is her performance art. The majority of Vanessa Beecroft's performances arts are all quite similar. Especially on the creative form and construction. The main materials she use in her art are normally heels, wigs or some other live figure. The models are always naked standing on the ground without any emotion(for Beecroft, those models are also the part of her materials to accomplish her performance art). From the Internet, Beecroft's performance has be describe as art, fashion, brilliant, evocative, provocative, disturbing, sexist, and I am really agree with these description. Beecroft usually bring us lots of girls without too many clothes or just naked girls on high black heels and dressing red, yellow black wigs. Every time I watch Beecroft's performance art and her photograpies from the Internet, those girls always try to find their own position with no talk or noise, and then standing in front of viewers completely. In these works, models wearing same dressing or just naked, and they have same face-painting. The girls in her artworks has no different characteristics any more. All these information these artworks present have changed my way of how I thought about nudity, and also I think this is not just some kind of naked girl pictures for male viewers to see.However, in Beecroft's works, nudity is a form of clothing. The particular hair color, the powerful heels girls on or shade of pantyhose, all these elements represent the illusion of integrate atmosphere.

Blog Assignment 3-Respond To The Exhibition

In this week, we visited the Te Tuhi exhibition and appreciated some art works. What I learned from those works is to feel the power of words, alphabets and characters. Sometimes we can see a hand drawing illustration of a story or on the cover of a book, and this illustration can be a presentation of the story. However, we can also draw words(not write) to represent art and let the literature become alive, and some artists draw words on some different and special carriers, like wall, window, body, glass, all these things will definitely give audiences a totally new visual impact. The New Zealand artist John Reynolds, I have see most of his artworks, and I even saw the John's art exhibition when I traveled to Wellington. He using text and other objects to describe majority of his work, like the one I saw in Wellington, there were thousands of little white cubes which were written were sticked vertically on a huge wall. I was really amazed by that one and that is my first time when I truly felt the fascination of collecting art and the power of text and materials. I think this is a totally new way to describe art. Because most of artists normally use color, line or concrete shape to represent their ideas. And this let me change the way of seeing arts. So, artists' job is to let people experience new representations which may uncomfortable for old way of seeing things but may eventually satisfy those senses. It's a job to always create something new.

In this exhibition, what I really keen on are the Black Market Next to My Name, by Daniel Malone and the Found Time: Big Ben, by McAlpine. The first one Daniel uses a text collecting way to represent the entire content of his life. It's really a fantastic artwork because it gives me a filled, massy and dense feeling when I looking at the text drew an the wall.

The another one is Found Time: Big Ben, I think to accomplish this, a artist need to spend plenty of time to collect materials and objects. I really like the design of the work's consist, each of the time spot displayed by The Big Ben were collected as a whole. And in this way, the Found Time: Big Ben has more convincingness and expressive force than just drawing a Big Ben or take some photographs.

To make this kind of art work, we should try to be a good art collector, we need to go to visit galleries as many as we can and collect useful information related to our ideas or enhance art mastery. We can also collect and amass some objects from normal life and put those connected objects together and practice more about it, that's when you get a collection artwork.

Blog Assignment 2-Brief Summary And My Own Top5

In the " Ten Good Reasons", the art writer Justin Paton selects ten amazing contemporary art works and explain the reasons why these paintings matter to him. Justin tries to tell readers "What is art?" and why arts impact too much in the world.

The majority of the art works Justin talks about is paintings and I think some of the reasons about a particular work is pretty meaningful, like "to show us how things look not only outside but inside", "start to describe things but then break away into other rhythms" and "what matters is not how big a painting is on the wall, but how big it grows in the mind". I think all these reasons can reflect a point which is all sorts of art are come from life, and, they are also higher than life. Artists could use their mind to look the other side of our society, live, experiences, etc. So, when you looking at a object on the canvas you may possbily feel this is familiar but it's also a little bit different from the real one.

So, if there is one art work which is really matter to you, I believe it must not becacuse you just like its exquisite drawing and flowery color, and I'm sure you must have find the specific emotional link between the you and the work created by artist. I hold the opinion that every one has their own top ten.

My top five

1, Chinese painting:Along the River During the Qingming Festival, by Zhang Zeduan.

As we know, there are many ways to describe arts, some are exquisite image, some are described abstract. Along the River During the Qingming Festival is famous of its geometrically accurate images of boats, bridges, people and so on. It is a 5.28-meter long painting, there are 814humans, 28boats, 60 animals, 30buildings, 20 vehicles. From the picture you will find each of those objects are drew quite accurate, ingenious and as vivid as life and amazing hand painting captures the daily life of people. So, there is no doubt that Zhang Zeduan has the astonishing ability to create art from real life.

2, The movie Pirates of the Caribbean. This is a adventure film and the charactor Captain Jack Sparrow is the most fascinating hero I'd ever seen. The red headband, black goatee, orchid fingers, etc. All these factors creat a art charactor Jack Sparrow. The reason why I love this film is beacous Jack Sparrow can bring audiences to a dangerous, thrill, but also exciting world, letting people to feel the real atmosphere of the time when pirates were controlling the sea.

3, The Dancing House, by Frank Gehry. This is a famous and magical building located in downtown Prague. This building is landmark of new style because it is break the tradition design.

It's looks like a house is dancing with jumpy syllable, and if you a imaginative you can also say it's a drunk building!

4 Mao, by USA artist Andy Warhol, Andy Warhol painted on the occasion of President Nixon's visit to China and this is one of the most exciting painting created by Warhol. On this painting you can see the bold and vivid colors, and it will gives audiences a irresistible charm. I think for people from western countries Mao is both a strange and common face to them, and Warhol use his special visual language to describe the pop representative man of eastern culture.

5 Statue of David by Michelangelo, this is genius Michelangelo's most famous masterwork. People will find the extraordinary technical skill and original imagination of this genius. Once I draw a sketch of a copy of statue of David, I deeply felt the strength of art and the more you look at the work and draw it the more you will learn from it.

Contextual Studies Blog Assignment One: Respond To The Film

The film Fast Food Nation presents the dark side of the fast food industry. The director Richard Linklater use many bloody scenes to represent how fast meal be made, like when workers killing a cattle auidences can see the bloodletting and head of a cattle. This make me feel that dose those innocent creatures should be treated like this? Do those fast food makers know what are they actually doing?
Amber was a Mickey's waiter before she made the decision that she doesn't want to keep working at Mickey. When she was working at Mickey, what she only knew is this job can pay her money and could possibly make her life more easy. Amber made the decision after she gets the process of how people make barbecue burger and how those poor cattles be treated. This is a unbelievable fact that Amber is hardly to accept. So, Amber organises a team with other people to save cattles and give those innocent creatures freedom. However the outcome is those cattles seem more likely to be killed and they don't care about their freedom. So, Amber and her peers' action dosen't impact too much to the fast food industry.
In my opinion, this film's purpose is not try to tell that people should not eat fast food after they watch the bloody scenes. We can see the point from the end of the film, some people have tried to change the fact and someone like Don has know the dark side of the fast food, but, everyting still goes as usual. When I was watching the driver with sun glass is ready to send more workers to the Mickey, I felt this is just a fact and no one can change that. Today, I think everyone probably knows this fact but they still go to MacDonald, KFC to enjoy their meal. Mexicans have to live, so they do this job. Don have to make sure his Mickey will not close down, so he is not going to get more details about fast food making process. Amber tried to change, but nothing changed. The free door is in front of those cattles but they don't try to make step. This is just a hopeless and can not help fact.