Analysis of painters work

In this blog post I will be writing an analysis of two different pieces of work by two different painters, both of which are different types of collages. The first collage I will be analysing in detail was created by Antoni Tapies who was a Spanish painter, sculptor and art theorist born in Barcelona on December 13, 1923. In 1958, Tapies was awarded the first prize for painting at the Pittsburgh international, and the UNESCO AND David E. Bright Prizes at the Venice Biennale for his contributions to the art community. The piece of his I will be analysing in detail is entitled Arrow (shown above) which is a collage produced in 1988 using mixed media such as lithography and card. Due to the process of lithography, the image which is shown above, for the most part, is actually a reverse or negative replication of an original piece consisting of a polymer coating. Therefore, for example, the apparent curved ‘arrow’ in the piece which is shown in the centre right pointing towards the right, would have actually have been on the centre towards the left pointing left on the original piece along with other aspects of the piece.

There are two prominent colours in this piece, being red and brown. Red can have many different connotations such as that of danger, blood, anger, passion, fire and sacrifice and therefore I think it is important to note that in this piece it is not the prominent part of the work, instead the colour brown which is shown by what appears to be a piece of card takes up the most space in the centre of the piece which lies on top of the red. I feel that the composite colour of brown could be used in this piece of art to represent nature due to its dirt like appearance created by combining red, black and yellow and being a part of the human appearance, such as hair colour, eye colour and skin pigmentation, I also think that the reasoning behind their being a distinct line between two shades of brown could be to represent the world in which Tapies felt he lived in, a world in which people were separated due to their skin colour, a world in which racism and other forms of discrimination took place back in the late eighties, therefore by putting an arrow between the two sides, (note that the darker side is more prominent which would be an accurate representative of those with generally darker skin tones in the world compared to lighter tones) Tapies could be suggesting that people need to join one another in harmony. The arrow is shown in black which is the very darkest of colours owing to its complete absorption of light, making it the opposite of white. I feel as if this arrow is black in order to symbolize the fact that many people find it harder than others to realize why it is important that the people of the world need to come together and overcome war of which could be represented by the red due to its connotations and the fact that it is actually underneath the brown, which implies that it is not an important part of life and that anger is the underlining problem causing such discrimination.

The next piece in which I will be analysing (seen bellow) was created by Holly Thoburn, who is an English painter born and raised in and around London who draws inspiration for her work from aspects of city life, such as street art e.g. graffiti tags and numerous different natural and non-natural textures which are found in her work. Since 2002, she has had more than twenty solo exhibitions all around the world from London, England to Los Angeles, USA. The removal and multiple layers of media on canvas such as acrylic which is found in this piece (which is entitled Earl & Duke (2009)) is evident in all of Thoburn’s work. In this piece, despite there being a combination of very dark and light tones, the two do not seem to contrast too much due to her use of removal as a technique. As a whole I feel that this piece feels very cold due to its blue tint which is most notable in the centre of the piece, meaning that I have an almost polar opposite feeling towards this piece than 'Arrow' due to the differences in their colour schemes. Unlike ‘Arrow’, the layering of this piece seems to be a lot harder to recognise due to its enormous amount of complexity on a relatively small canvas (70cm x 70cm). The one aspect of this piece which stands out the most in my opinion is that of what I assume is a graffiti tag created with pink spray paint which can easily be seen as being one of the final layers of the piece as it appears to be the most intact.

 

Remember My Name: Rauschenberg

In this blog post I will be analysing the following piece of artwork by former American graphic artist, sculptor and painter Robert Rauschenberg, of whom was and is well known for his earlier works which anticipated the pop art movement which emerged back in 1950's America. Rauschenberg spent most of his life working in New York City creating combinations of many different materials and objects which reflected the political and cultural views of himself and others of each decade he worked in all the way up until his death at the age of 82 due to heart failure on May 12th, 2008 in Florida, USA.

In 1995, at the age of 70, Rauschenberg was rightfully awarded the Leonardo da Vinci World Award of Arts after contributing over 40 years of his working life to innovative mark making. One of his innovations in particular was his use of 'combines' (which he coined himself to describe his work) which are basically a combination of painting and sculpture made from many different objects which are then incorporated into a painted canvas. Many of his combines were puzzles of images and words that linked together to create a narrative in a piece: such as the one shown below. Considered to be his most famous piece is a stuffed taxidermy goat passing through an automobile tire entitled Monogram (1950's) which can be seen bellow on the right:






The piece shown above to the left (the one in particular that I will be analysing in detail) is titled: 'Estate' and was found on the popular image sharing site Pinterest. It is currently owned by the Philadelphia Museum of Art and was created in New York City back in 1963 by Rauschenberg with oil and silkscreen ink on canvas.

During this period of time, many historical events took place in America, ones in which will be remembered for years to come, for example in the year 1963, President Kennedy was shot and killed in Dallas, November 22 and Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his 'I have a dream' speech in front of 200,000 black and white supporters in Washington DC on August 28. These events most likely would have affected Rauschenberg's work as he was a supporter of John F. Kennedy and believed in racial equality.

This piece contains a lot of red, white, blue and black which would suggest that Robert was possibly trying to convey a generally negative emotion about certain aspects of New York City (of which many aspects of the city are shown such as The Statue of Liberty) and/or the events during this time taking place in America (listed above) as these colours are linked to themes such as danger, blood, death, coldness, sadness, lifelessness etc.

The composition also features a few counts of repetition which could be used to represent rhythm within each instance, for example in the bottom right of the canvas three images of the same filled glass of water are shown, however each image is slightly different and therefore could represent a change in people's views over time towards things such as a glass of water, maybe Rauschenberg felt that as time had progressed, the value of a simple glass of water had decreased in many people's eyes. However on the other hand, a worldwide iconic structure such as that of The Statue of Liberty is immortalized in gold and is surrounded by many as it is an unusual and rare object (like gold itself) unlike water, which can be found in a lot of places in New York.

A few words which stand out upon this artwork are 'STOP', 'One Way' 'One' and 'Public Shelter', all of which are street signs combined onto one single pole, although three of them appear to be commissioned by the government unlike 'Public Shelter' which appears to me as if it were made by a separate individual as it does not follow the same stylistic guidelines as the rest. The fact that three of these could be viewed as powerful commands to conform and are all created by the public authority could portray Rauschenberg's concerns over certain regulations of the government which only tell people what to do to avoid difficulties, instead of how to actually deal with them if they do occur (like helpful directions to a Public Shelter).