ICIB5201 Intro to Story
IS. Part 2 （Riding Death in My Sleep）
Analysis of the Riding Death in My Sleep
From the list of the work, the Riding Death in My Sleep is most repelling to me. The Riding Death in My Sleep was created by Wangechi Mutu in 2001, New York (Wangechi, 2013). At the first glance, I felt disgusting, and I was crashing by the ugly man, uncomfortable style. It looks like the product of human and animal’s incest. I wander that what kind of artist can create this kind of work, an alien head, moldy skin, and a weird bird with olecranon and sneak tail (Allison, 2013). I guess the artist was eager to make a noise in the world, so he used ridiculous, ugly and grotesque image to attract people’s attention. Her full red lips and drawing eyes offer a dare of attraction. However, the effect will be bad by irresponsible and disgusting design. It captured my attention by obnoxious bald woman red lips and strange brain shape. I guess the aim of this picture is to express the new era women’s craziness, or describe a weird world with evil animal.
(Duke, 2013)
After searching some research sources and literature, I acquired further understanding of this product, Wangechi Mutu explored the violence and misrepresentation that women experience in the contemporary world (Benjy, 2013). The work was inspired by anthropological, ethnographic and medical texts, and it used the aesthetic rejection and wretchedness to explore the art world (Wangechi, 2013).
It is a painting, so the materials will be paper and paint. The background color is gray, and the overall tone is melancholy. The woman locates the center place of the painting, and the woman stands on a rounded ground with some mushrooms. A lizard lies on the lady’s shoulder. An eagle is stands on the ground with a pair of paws. These images are placed on the painting?, creating similar coiled and hybrid imagery, and make people hard to understand its meaning .
The work was displayed in museum which was a Kenyan-American artist, and it belongs to the “Afropolitan” moment which was similar to the older pan-africanism ideology (Theguardian, 2013). It is a worldwide intellectual movement which aims to enhance and strengthen all world African descents’ uniting (Mbembe, 2016; Eze2014). In addition, many Wangechi’s work reflects the contemporary African culture in America, female politic free, and they are insidious, innocuous, and invisible (Arnfred, 2010).
It is a part of Grotesque Beauty School, and the grotesque has strong visual effect (Ryono, 2007) And Wangechi likes to make grotesque artworks, for example:
Family Tree (Duke, 2013)
Misguided Little Unforgivable Hierarchies(Duke, 2013)
A Shady Promise (Duke, 2013)
The Bride Who Married a Camel’s Head (Duke, 2013)
From these paintings, I can give you a little understand of Riding Death in My Sleep, Wangechi’s works contain a weird world that I cannot understand. The imagination of these artworks is very worthy of praise, and the bold drawing style is shocking and admiring. However, compared the work Riding Death in My Sleep, I prefer to doing these four artworks. These four pictures are thought-provoking, and I like to research them. For the Riding Death in My Sleep, I even do not want to know more about it, because I personally hate the sense of head with evil atmosphere. I have no prejudice against baldness, but baldness combine with evil or gloomy style make people feel awful and escape things (Sipos, 2010). This is why the villain in the movies is always bald. So it is easy to understand why it is most repelling to me.
Lord Voldemort
For the Riding Death in My Sleep, I felt this is a bad woman at the first glance, I believe it is not original intention of the author.
Reference
Arnfred, Signe, and Akosua Adomako Ampofo. African feminist politics of knowledge: Tensions, challenges, possibilities. Nordiska Afrikainstitutet, 2010.
Allison Meier, The Grotesque Beauty of Wangechi Mutu, hyperallergic.com, 2013
Retrieved 11 May 2017, from
https://hyperallergic.com/77092/the-grotesque-beauty-of-wangechi-mutu/
Benjy Hansen, A Fantastic Journey Into the Mind of Collage Artist Wangechi Mutu, Mother Jones, 2013
Retrieved 11 May 2017, from http://www.motherjones.com/media/2013/10/interview-collage-artist-wangechi-mutu-fantastic-journey
Duke, SELECTED WORKS, 2013
Retrieved 11 May 2017, from http://nasher.duke.edu/mutu/art.php
Eze, Chielozona. “Rethinking African culture and identity: the Afropolitan model.” Journal of African Cultural Studies 26.2 (2014): 234-247.
Mbembe, Achille, and Sarah Balakrishnan. “Pan-African Legacies, Afropolitan Futures: A conversation with Achille Mbembe.” Transition 120.1 (2016): 28-37.
Ryono, Izumi. Grotesque beauty. University of North Carolina at Greensboro, 2007.
Sipos, Thomas M. Horror film aesthetics: Creating the visual language of fear. McFarland, 2010.
Theguardian, The Afrofuturism of Wangechi Mutu, 2013
Retrieved 11 May 2017, from
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/nov/13/wangechi-mutu-art-afrofuturism
Wangechi Mutu: A Fantastic Journey, Brooklyn Museum, 2013
Retrieved 11 May 2017, from
https://www.artsy.net/artwork/wangechi-mutu-riding-death-in-my-sleep
IS. Part 1(Made You Look)
Analysis of the Made You Look
The selected picture is the cover of the book “Made You Look” by designer Stefan Sagmeister and design historian Peter Hall，2009, and it is the most engaging to me in the list and felt amazed when I see this picture. The comparison of two pictures shows one normal face of the dog and another ugly face of the dog with red background. The obnoxious dog face captured my attention, I have to say it shocked me visually at the first glance. “The purpose of the picture is to encourage people to look at things in different ways, and man has many facets” (Sagmeister,2005).
(Hall, 2001)
It is graphic design, and it was presented as the cover of the book Made You Look covered by a red PVC slipcase. So the materials is paper, and it can be expressed as the electronic picture (Harvey, 2015). The background color is scarlet, and the mood of the dog to worsen considerably. The design is the mix of two dogs’ faces, and the dogs’ face occupies the center of the image. It was made to be viewed as the cover of the book, it is used to illustrate the concept of another self (Marta, 2014). Although we all have own unique personality, environmental factors will sometimes make us far away from our personality, make it difficult to understand what kind of person we are , or very difficult to know how we will act in a particular environment. The strong contrast effect inspires people to think another himself (Abebooks, 2015). It seems like when the red overlay is taken off, it reveals a different ugly image, or true image.
Stefan Sagmeister is the creative director of New York Stefan Sagmeister design company, and the AGI member, the professor of Cooper New York art joint school, and currently teaching at the New York School of visual arts graduate department (Zhou, 2010). Stefan committed to promote the music package, his design combines texture and concept, he constantly changes in form and great creativity, and he has opened up a vast space for the CD packaging design, and set a new standard for the industry.
In my opinion, Stefan Sagmeister’s idea of this picture belongs to post modernism, he is unusual, anti-traditional graphic designer. For example, the tree design Good, AIGA lecture poster, and New orleans poster are typical innovative, exaggerate, crazy, and unlimited postmodern creating art works.
AIGA lecture poster by Stefan. 1997. Good by Stefan. 1997
New orleans poster by Stefan. 1997.
Post-modernism thinks a given texts, characterization or symbol has infinitely many explanations (Hutcheon, 2003). It has anti-traditional trend in theory. Post-modernism is the new thinking which is subversive for the creative theme and creative forms, it is difficult to make style consistent (Jameson, 1991). It is hard to illustrate the creation field of postmodern situation, or define the exact postmodern, most of post modernist refuse to define the postmodern. This picture design is bold, exaggerated, and scary, which shows the anti-traditional thinking. It uses the innovative approach to make the visual design.
(Bucher, 2006)
It is the mountains of madness’ album cover for h. p. zinker by Stefan Sagmeister, in 1994, the album is removed from the transparent red case the facial expression changes (Vrontikis, 2002). This is another picture which uses similar contract method and red layer cover, but it is a different expression and, it is not under a same face, the right face’s eyes are open up, it expresses the different theme. It is a unique design method that belongs to Stefan Sagmeister. The modern computer image technology assisted to add color on the work of dog photo and image overlay, the technology help the color rendering. Under the modern capitalist society culture, people have another face of greedy and cruel. Some people blindly worship money, seem the value of money as the highest value, all values are subject to the value idea and behavior.
Reference;
Hall, Peter A., et al. Sagmeister: made you look. Booth-Clibborn, 2001.
Jameson, Fredric. Postmodernism, or, the cultural logic of late capitalism. duke university Press, 1991.
Hutcheon, Linda. A poetics of postmodernism: History, theory, fiction. Routledge, 2003.
Bucher, Stefan. All Access: The Making of Thirty Extraordinary Graphic Designers. Rockport Publishers, 2006.
Vrontikis, Petrula. Inspiration: a creativity sourcebook for graphic designers. Rockport Pub, 2002.
TED Speaker, Stefan Sagmeister, Graphic designer, 2005. Retrieved 28 April 2017, from; https://www.ted.com/speakers/stefan_sagmeister
Abebooks, About the Book, Sagmeister: Made You Look 2009. Retrieved 5 May 2017, from; https://www.abebooks.com/Sagmeister-Made-Look-Stefan-Peter-Hall/9018569063/bd
Harvey Jack Johnson, Sagmeister, GDBlogs Sites 2015. Retrieved 5 May 2017, from; https://gdblogs.shu.ac.uk/b3008772/2015/03/09/sagmeister-made-you-look/
Marta Roca, Cover Shot, grafik.net, 2014. Retrieved 5 May 2017, from; https://www.grafik.net/category/covershot/loud-bark
Zhou Dingxiang, Stefan Sagmeister, blog.sina, 2010. Retrieved 5 May 2017, from; http://blog.sina.com.cn/s/blog_659104780100jrho.html
ASSIGNMENT 1 EXERCISE 3
Haystack series
The Haystack series was completed from the late summer of 1890 to spring 1891. It is a series of paintings by French artist Claude Monet. These works are “Haystack” as the theme, is the canvas. The haystack is a picture only with color, brushwork and atmosphere distinguished works, on the day, the quarterly keen observation and describing of light at different time is the main feature. The Haystack in winter morning is an excellent one in the painting series. In the picture, light and shadow, the perfect combination of warm and cold colors lining are very moving. The rolling hill was painted purple with tiny spots. The bump of hills was reflected in two colors of mutual contrast. On the right side of mountain is some slightly thick purple, the left is a lighter purple, the comparison of two kinds of color express the light different of peaks. The draw place is the French Giverny near Monet residence.
The Haystack in Winter Morning, Claude Monet
In the Franco Prussian War (1870 -1871), Monet came to British for asylum where he studied with John Constable and J.M.W. Turner. Their works inspired Monet to research the innovation of light and color. This promoted Monet to be an impressionist painter. In 1880s and 90s, Monet began a series of painting, that is a continuous draw for one object in a different light and angle. Monet specializes in light and shadow performance skills. His most important method is to change the style of the shadow and contour. There are not very clear shadow in Monet’s paintings, cannot see the highlights or style outline. Light and shadow color description is benefit for the Monet painting characteristics.
These Haystacks are at noon, under the scorching sun, after snow, in morning mist, and in twilight. The formal characteristics of the work are formed by ever-changing light. In this case, the light is the promoter of everything, and the initiator of everything. Because of the light, the real world is more colorful and changeable, and the painting be fascinating.
Reference
Rosow, I. (1994). Lessons from the museum: Claude Monet and social roles.The Gerontologist, 34(3), 292-298.
Johnston, S., & Tucker, P. H. (2004). In Monet’s Light: Theodore Robinson at Giverny. Baltimore Museum of Art.
Assignment 1-Exercise 2 of 3
The first blog I read was written by Teresia Teaiwa with the title “I was once seduced by Disney. But no longer.” In the blog, Teresia stated the view that Disney’s products may have educational effects on audience, but people should learn how to create their own ideas instead of accepting ideas. And the story in the Disney film is not 100 percent accurate, thus Disney is not suitable for learning. Although Disney products are very charming and people are easily attracted.
The author points out that the content of the story is not completely accurate and opposite to the real history. Sometimes people may feel confused by the story of the film, such as the Pirates of the Caribbean. The series of Pirates of the Caribbean told the story that may not exactly be the same as the real history. I have been a fan of Disney for a long time and I disagree with the point of view because of my previous experiences. It is just a reflection of the background and themes. In other words, Disney is a commercial company, so making profit is undeniably their main purpose.
Personally, I disagree with the idea since the Disney films has the educational effect on children. The writer should critically analyze the content of Disney films. The film is not only just telling stories, but also thought-provoking. Ever since I was a little child, I wanted to see Disney films. Since the films not only teach me lessons, but also help me to form my character, such as being a brave person when I watched the Lion King. It is very difficult to do this but Disney succeeds. The influence of Disney is very significant and widely spread. The way Disney uses is very wise. The cartoon film is a good form for education, in that people are easier to accept it and seduced by Disney. Although many parts of Disney products are designed and not real, the educational effects of Disney should not be underestimated.
My story （Jason）
When I first came to New Zealand, I was unfamiliar with everything. Because I came to the country where I never arrived, but I knew why came here and my family’s expectation for me is to be able to complete my art and design career and ask me to explore the western art and Maori art culture. Although I encountered many setbacks, and even thought to give up, but I firmly overcome them.
I studied the Certificate of Visual Arts Course last year, I was very fortunate to meet an excellent and highly skilled teacher, he taught a lot of useful artistic knowledge, for instance, the use of software skills and the process of how to complete a work of art, such as Photoshop, InDesign and illustrator and so on. And he told me that I am very good at using computer painting and mastering sketch painting techniques at the end of the semester. But I know that, in fact, I need more art experience to make the things I do more incisive and need to know more about western artists, designers of the works, to study and explore them. I am grateful to him that his patience with the student is praiseworthy.
Figure 1. Photoshop work. Tool; digital panel. Paint the Plant people. Finished at 10 December, 2017. Copy.
Figure 2. Plank people (Unknown., 2014)
Comic Lupin night scene. Tuesday, 1 November 2016. Photoshop. Copy
(The original work)
In the terms of photography, I also learned a lot of skills and knowledge in the spare time, such as long exposure photography, can be said to make me further deepen the love of photography. Although it can not compare to Mumbley Joe, Matthew Fang, but I am able to grasp the most basic elements and concepts.
Long exposure photography work. Yi hang, Li. Tuesday, 12 April 2016
Shoot on Sunday. Yihang Li. 23 October 2016
Since I attended the programme last semester, which deepened me the understanding of arts. The diversity of art, for example, I have some views and opinions on Maori art. In the future I hope I can become an interior designer or advertising designer, I have a passion for them, a dedication to promote me to seriously research them. I will also learn more about the different areas of art design in the future, which is why I chose the Creative and Enterprise.
Jason (Yihang, Li) 