On the 26th of January, for my Dads birthday, me and my family went to the Dora Maar exhibition at the Tate Modern. To be perfectly honest, I wasn't that impressed. I can respect that she was a revolutionary, early 20th century Photographer and Artist who worked with the likes of Picasso, but I didn't admire her work as if it was amazing. I thought her pictures were average in my opinion. I did like a few of the adverts she did such as the girl behind a cobweb, which was for an anti-ageing product, and a few of her street photography pictures such as the man with his head in a hole. However, I did not like her collages at all as they were meant to look out of place but I thought the look she was going for was unclear and they didn't engage me into her work. Also, most of her street photography looked amateur to me. They normally consisted of one person doing a normal act with no meaning behind it. Overall, it was a decent exhibition but I didn't think her work was very good, simply put. Maybe it's just me and only I don't like her work but it seems not that way as I have tried to interpret her pieces in different ways but always end up giving her work a low rating. I expected more from someone who was so highly rated by the likes of Picasso.
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The first section, Early Pictures of Soho, consisted of photographers doing mainly street photography of the Soho area and what the scene was like in the 50's and 60's. Night clubs, gay bars and strip clubs were all very popular and common in the area at the time. Some of these are still here today but don't have near the attraction as they used to which is shown in some of the photos taken by the likes of William Klein and others.
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The 'Food' area showed food that had been captured to be interpreted as something else such as Edward Weston's 'Pepper No. 30' which showcases a pepper seemingly showing off its muscles. The pictures in this section were mainly black and white to show the contrast and shadows of the food and were primarily of fruit and vegetables as a deformed version of a fruit or vegetable could be interpreted in a very different way.
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The last section, Contemporary Food, was full of very colourful foods and rather rude interpretations. These pictures were taken at the mid 20th to late 20th century making this section very interesting and intriguing as the world went through such big changes at those times. The section showcased some interesting cook book's which had very vibrant foods(so bright it would make you feel sick) and interesting recipes such as spam in a fruit salad. Artists such as Martin Parr and Cindy Sherman featured in this section and showcased food in a number of ways.
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I think this photo shows 'broken' quite literally as it looks like the man has no head. The contrast from the light of the car and the black and white filter adds a very comprehensive effect but the absence of the woman's face and the man's head make the image seem incomprehensive and broken.
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Once again, for this picture, the subjects face is cut out of the picture like it's missing and separated. The composition in this picture is strange as the woman's head is more visible than the mans head in the other picture, as we can see her hair, but, her forearm is exactly where the face of the man outsides face would be. Aswell as this, the composition of the picture also means we only see one corner of the room and not the whole room possibly adding onto the effect that the woman is in a tight squeeze to escape out the window. This photo shows 'broken' because of its non-appearance of faces and it's improvised and cut-off composition.
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My first Photographer I analysed for my broken theme was Canadian Anthony Gerace. Working and living in London Gerace's work is said to be "primarily concerned with the effect of time on objects and images", which is clear to see in his 'People Living' project which consists of multiple collages created from one page of a vintage magazine from a time in his life. In his work he combines photography, typography and collages to which he didn't know how to combine them at all at the beginning but learnt by starting with just collages which led to poster design and that led to graphic design and so on. His inspirations originates from people being so invested into their work as he quoted "there was a summer where I spent every single day at my friends’ studio, and seeing how they lived, and how their work was in everything they did, was really inspiring".
I like Gerace's 'People Living' collages as they can be interpreted in many different ways ranging from who the person was and their problems, or deception, or deformity and so on. It doesn't have a clear message and is to be interpreted how you want to see it. Specifically, the picture on the right eliminates the top half of the woman's face adding an effect of concealed facial expression. We can see the woman's hand near her face and her mouth slightly open possibly implying a feeling of shock or worriedness but because we can only see half of her face, we don't know what she's feeling. Gerace cuts off the image at certain points only giving us hints to the meaning of the picture. Really thorough artist research section, Magnus! Can you annotate the photo on the right, describing it specifically and explaining what kind of effect's been created by the artist by displaying the deconstructed image in this type of a grid? |
I edited this image by first cropping and rotating the image so the parts of the picture I didn't need were cut out and the image was straight. I then placed a grid on top of the picture by going to view>show>grid. If I were to save the image as it were, the grid wouldn't show up so I drew lines over the grids lines, using the shapes tool and selecting lines, so when I removed the grid, the image would have a grid that would show up when I saved it. I then cut out ares of the background using the rectangular marquee tool and then copy and pasting, cmd v and cmc c. I would only place the section of the background I cut out in the same column from the grid I got it from so when I placed it over the subject, the background would line up. I repeated this many times copy and pasting the same section of background and doing the same for other sections of the picture. The final result you see is multiple ares of the background placed over the subject to complete a Gerace image.
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The piece of Hirst's I am focusing on is his work on medicine. In 1989, he made 12 cabinets full of all kinds of medicine naming them after each title of the songs in the Sex Pistols' first album ('pretty vacant', 'liar', 'sinner' and so on). His reasons for using medicine as art is that he thinks 'art can heal like a pill or medicine does'. When Hirst was questioned "Art can heal?", he replied with "I think the thing that is forgotten is that we are going to die… They can only heal you for a minute. When they are giving you drugs to keep you alive there is a point where you have got to say its not worth it, I think". Aswell as his cabinets work, he also rebranded some medicine packaging changing the name to British foods such as 'sandwich'. In this work, Hirst once again explains that all humans are going to die eventually and we can't depend on drugs to 'heal' us. In the actual cabinets themselves, are empty medicine packages and bottles etc, which Hirst calls "empty f*cking vessels", allocated to the different organs in the body for example, the heart. The cabinets are meant to portray the human body and they 'explore the distinction of life and death, myth and medicine'. He's asking 'does it actually help?' and to that I sort of agree as death is unavoidable but medicine helps with not dying earlier and instead dying later.
I like this work the most out of all his medicine work as Hirst takes the mick out of some medicine and their companies whilst still looking clean and proffessional. |
Describe what's in the cabinet and what it's all about. What are your opinions of this work and why?
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Probably Gursky's most famous image, and my favourite, '99 cent' was inspired by his fascination in a dollar store window he drove by one in Los Angeles. He came across a very colourful one and decided to take a picture of it. This work has become so famous he even did a related piece 2 years later with '99 cent II, Diptych'. The two pictures are of two different stores but are both very similar to the original apart from the change in colour which shows a change in mass production and marketing in the last few years.
Gursky's pictures attract to me a lot because of how interesting they are as you would've never known something like a dollar store could be portrayed as a very positive and colourful place. His images don't portray 'broken' at all really, in fact they're almost the opposite. Because of his composition and his use of the wide shot, nothing is meant to be cut out of the image as he captures a wide shot in every one of his pictures. Although saying this, few of his images hint at broken like 'Bahrain I'. Nonetheless, I love his pictures and my favourites are the '99 cent' pictures to which I wish to recreate these images in my work. Why is his work in the Broken theme? Explain how it relates to this or does it? It's ok if there's something else about the images that you'd like to use but if so, say so. |