Art Activism

The relationship between art and political activism has a long story. My point of view focuses on different artists that in this years did performance and peace with a denouncing political meaning. This is not programmed art, either commissioned art, but they represent the willingness of hit a political ideology with art.
I can’t avoid quoting the Biennale of Istanbul (2011) or the Biennale of Berlin (2012) dedicated to the relationship between art and politics. Artists in Istambul were focusing on artworks that are both formally innovative and politically outspoken. It takes as its point of departure the work of the Cuban American artist Felix Gonzalez-Torres (1957–1996). Gonzalez-Torres was deeply attuned to both the personal and the political, and also rigorously attentive to the formal aspects of artistic production, integrating high modernist, minimal, and conceptual references with themes of everyday life.
The 7th Berlin Biennale had an impact on district politics and the landscape of the city; besides was hosting many activists artist, the ticket was free to everyone.

One of the artists that I have been researching on is Ai Weiwei; also his is a political activist artist, as an activist, he calls attention to human rights violations on an epic scale; as an artist, he expands the definition of art to include new forms of social engagement. In a country where free speech is not recognised as a right, the police have beaten him up, kept him under house arrest, bulldozed his newly built studio and subjected him to surveillance. He is viewed as a threat to “harmonious society.”

A-120-3

Study of Perspective Tiananmen Square (1995)

Also known as the “Gate of Heavenly Peace”, and formerly the front entrance to the Forbidden City, this was also the site of the brutal massacre in 1989 in which state soldiers shot peaceful protesters. The Beijing government still refuses to discuss it, and censors all footage of the event.

 

Bibliography:

http://12b.iksv.org

http://www.theartstory.org

A. Weiwei, Ai Weiwei: Sunflower Seeds, 2010

National Gallery CTS

The National Gallery is one of the most important galleries in London because it hosts painting from the 15th century like Leonardo Da Vinci or Piero Della Francesca to the 18/19th-century artist like Georges Seurat and Vincent Van Gogh. We once went with all the CTS class to do a visual exercise that it was finding two painting with female nude and understand what the painters were trying to communicate.

Before starting the research of a beautiful and full of meaning woman I went in the more classic part of the gallery, where I could admire the beautifulness of “The Baptism of Christ” (Piero Della Francesca, 1450). Since I was 12 years old this paint was always one of the covers of the Art History Books and seen it in front of me it was an experience; further to Piero Della Francesca, “The Virgin Of The Rocks” (Leonardo Da Vinci, 1506) and “Venus and Mars” (Sandro Botticelli, 1485).
For the CTS exercise, we had just to peak up a piece from the 18th century onwards, so the majority of the possibilities of choice where gone. In the 19th century, art movements (loose associations of artists working in a similar style) emerged, as did the idea of the independent artist who rebelled against the official art establishment, so also the view of a nude in painting changed.

One of the two painting that I chose was “Bathers (Les Grandes Baigneuses)” (Paul Cézanne, 1905). Cézanne was reinterpreting a long tradition of paintings with nude figures in the landscape by artists such as Titian and Poussin. While the subjects of their works were taken from classical myths, Cézanne did not use direct literary sources. Instead, his central theme was the harmony of the figures with the landscape expressed through solid forms, strict architectonic structure, and the earth tones of the bodies.

Bibliography:

http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk

 

 

Sustainable Design

CTS lessons are often about recycling or pollution, any times we change point of view to see the same thing, sustainable design it is been one of the most interesting lessons in my opinion.

Eco-sustainable Design is getting every year more and more important for people, but getting a significant goal is always so hard.
The principal objectives of sustainability are to reduce consumption of non-renewable resources, minimise waste, and create healthy, productive environments.
Many are the ideas of making product design in an eco-sustainable way, but using cardboard to make any furniture is an admirable idea. It can look difficult create a chair in cardboard but is actually easy; with the help of programmes like Autodesk 123DMake, everyone can create his own design in cardboard with some simple process.

Projects like the Warka Water Tower by Arturo Vittori or the Moscardino by Giulio Iacchetti are helping people and the environment proceeding with simple ideas that really change the situation.

The water tower consists of a bamboo frame supporting a mesh polyester material inside. Rain, fog and dew condense against the mesh and trickles down a funnel into a reservoir at the base of the structure. A fabric canopy shades the lower sections of the tower to prevent the collected water from evaporating.

Moscardino is a multi-use cutlery made in a recycling material (Mater-bi) useful to eat a fast, informal meal, without making any waste.

Design even been a culprit of a relative part of the pollution in the world is also the answer to a green future. The history of sustainability is a relatively young one. At the In 1987 the UN Environment Commission, chaired by Gro Harlem Brundtland, defined sustainable development as: “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to respond to their needs”.

 

Bibliography

http://www.giulioiacchetti.com

Moodle arts

GSA (2016). Sustainable Design. Available at https://www.gsa.gov/portal/content/104462.

Semiotics point of view

Semiotic is a general science of symbols, of their production, transmission, interpretation and how we communicate through an object or an image. Semiotic is the discipline that studies the phenomenon of meaning. For meaning, we mean the relation between something physically present and something absent for example the red traffic light mean “stop”; every time we activate a communication process ( the light is red, so I stop the car ).
The underlying argument behind the semiotic approach is that since all cultural objects convey meaning, and all cultural practice depend on the purpose, they must make use of signs.; and as they do, signs must work like language and words. Therefore, signs must be able to be interpreted and analysed.
The definition of the relation between sign and semiotic of Pierce take place with three elements: Representamen, the physics part; the object, a referent where the sign is referring; the interpreted, what comes from the sign or generate the sign.
Despite different approach used by various semiologist, it is possible to say that the Greimas theory collects all the agreement parts of most theories. What is unanimously accepted is that to analyse a paint we need to concentrate on the expression of the image, understand for which reason the piece it has been made: conversational, for religious purpose or express something political so that you can adopt the suitable strategy.
All the text in a painting is a carrier of a semiotic meaning, the semiotic in painting study the hidden marks and its significance.

The sign is the relation that includes signifier and signified; the signifier is a concept, an idea, an expression of something ( of a material object, of a living thing, of an action, etc. ) that materialise through the signified that does exist as the bearer of meaning.

Bibliography

Wk 3 semiotic CTS, Moodle

Umberto E., A Theory Of Semiotics, 1975

 

Review “Alleluia”

It is now in exhibition one of the compositions by Thomas Cooper Gotch representing one of the most important chorales in the Catholic church. Alleluia is one of the Gotch compositions that were painted at the end of the 19th century in style adopted after the travel of the artist in Italy, where he got impressed by the set-up adopted in the Italian churches.

The compositions by Gotch post-1892 takes focus on the themes of motherhood and child development; in the same composition with “Alleluia”, we have “The Child Enthroned” (1894), “The Heir to All The Ages “(1897), “A Pageant of Childhood” (1899, Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool) and “Holy Motherhood” (1902, Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle-Upon-Tyne).

Alleluia exhibited 1896 Thomas Cooper Gotch 1854-1931 Presented by the Trustees of the Chantrey Bequest 1896 http://www.tate.org.uk/art/work/N01590

As we can see he perfectly replicate the effect of a winged altarpiece painted oil on wood as an example the “Maestà del Duomo di Siena” of Duccio di Buoninsegna; also share a common hieratic style and reveal a symbolism of religious ritual.

Caused the artist to be linked with a contemporary revival of interest in English Pre-Raphaelitism.

In a long monographic article on Gotch written in 1910, the American critic, Charles Caffin, commented of Alleluia: ‘A touch of seriousness shadows Gotch’s vision. Where two rows of children in dresses of damask and brocade stand in front of a gilded architectural wainscot, singing the old Latin hymn of praise to God. In this modern “Cherub’s Choir” the artist has translated it into the symbolism of his idea of childhood, which is not merely a love of youth as a stationary aspect of life, but a step in the evolution of the individual and the race’ (Caffin, p.930).

The Windsor Magazine, in 1896 declared of Alleluia that: ‘Almost every Eastern and Western nation is represented in the rainbow robes which clothe the children’.

 

The Windsor Magazine, p.279, quoted in Wallace

Caffin, p.930

http://www.tate.org.uk