Thesis Critique #1

So I recently went through the first stage of group critiques for my thesis project. The review of our thesis this time around was mostly to discuss the overall concept of our piece rather than talking about our current progress and technique. I felt a little alienated from the group, due to the fact that I was amongst fine artists, photographers, and etc. This feeling was fortunately rather shortlived, and now I'm rather grateful for the diversity of the critique group. I got to hear what other people had to say about my concept of time as a tangible existence in a point of view other than a designer's. The suggestions and reactions to my thesis were simpler and were on more of an artistic level; not saying that design isn't artistic, but it relies much more heavily on function of an idea rather than just having an idea for the sake of just having one. In a nutshell it just made me feel more relaxed to be in a group of critics that aren't designers.

SDitAW: Chapter 6 - The Studio Visit

1. I get a kick out of the fact that Murakami doesn't use Illustrator, or rather he doesn't know how to. It's a sign of a true traditional artist who likes to stick to what he knows. Or maybe he just finds it troublesome to explore other mediums; whatever floats your boat Murakami, your work already looks like vector work as is.

2. I appreciate Murakami's devotion to his use of color (flat color). It lends his work a very sharp crisp and bright look, something that me a designer finds very attractive.

3."I threw out my general life so I can make concentration for my job."Holy crap is this guy ever so focused. Six years in college and I can't think of a single moment where I wasn't finding enjoyment in my general life. I can understand where he's going with this, but it feels a little too extreme for me. You gotta have the fun and everyday relaxation to balance out the work.

4. Respect. I greatly respect his activeness and interaction with all of his studios.

5. Merchandise, merchandise, merchandise. I remember this very much about Murakami, and it seems to be a very big thing amongst the Japanese. I don't knock it, in fact I think it's nice that he can find use in his work outside of the gallery halls.

SDitAW: Chapter 3 - The Fair

1. I understand that the art world is a very competitive field and that making a living out of it is important; but reading into this chapter, I felt that somewhere along the way, art had sort of lost its original purpose of pleasing an audience, rather than bringing in a profit or any kind of fame.

2. Overall there was too much talk about the economy in art. It kinda bored me.

3. “An artist doesn’t become an artist in a day, so a collector shouldn’t become a collector in a day. It’s a lifetime process.” This is so true that it's not even funny. I see myself as both an artist and a collector, and in both cases I believe that I'll be spending the rest of my life in perfecting my craft and collection.

4. "Occasionally meeting an artist destroys the art. You almost don't trust it. You think what you're seeing in the work is an accident."

5. "In the art world, gossip is never idle. It is a vital form of market intelligence." Yeaaaaaah, I gotta give it to this one. Too many things ring true with this line. The only way to keep up with the art world is to hear what's going on and what's the latest big thing. Unfortunately for me, that's something that I need to work on.

SDitAW: Chapter 2 - The Crit

- "MFA stands for yet another Mother-Fucking Artist."

- "The prevailing belief is that any artist whose work fails to display some conceptual rigor is little more than a pretender, illustrator, or designer."

- "In more senses than one, it costs a lot to be an artist."

- "Creative is definitely a dirty word.... You Would not want to say it in Post Studio. People would gag!it's almost as embarrassing as beautiful or sublime or masterpiece."

- "Group critiques offer a unique-some say "utopian"-situation in which everyone focuses on the student's work with a mandate to understand it as deeply as possible."

The Mason Gross MFA Show

I've got three letters for this show. U...G...H, ugh, yes ugh, I know that's not a word, but this work wasn't what I'd call "art" either. Now I know many would give me hell for saying that, but hey it's my opinion so I'll voice it however I want. Let's see where do I begin, a lot of the work that I saw in there was simply no different from what I've seen in other MG exhibitions. Concept, concept, and more concept. Did I mention concept? I see that art as half concept and half technique, but that show right there was mostly eighty-percent concept and twenty-percent artistic ability. In fact, I have a bone to pick with the vast majority of the art world; I don't call them artists, I call them posers and opportunists. People follow the art "trend" just because randomly splattering paint on a canvas in a single color or painting a geometric form on top of a photo is now the new thing; and guess what folks? IT'S EASY!
(I'll be back with more to say on this later)

Zimmerli: Japanese Prints

Okay so here I am reviewing an exhibition that I saw over at the Zimmerli last week. Honestly speaking, I wasn't expecting much from the Zimmerli museum, due to the fact that it's a university attraction. I sorta have this bad bias towards such museums, thinking that they only exist for the sake of the univeristy's public recognition. Shallow yes, and it's something that I'm still trying to get over. However I was glad to see something that struck my misconceptions upside the head.

Wood block prints. Japanese related ones at that. Though they may not have been made by the hands of their cultural kinsmen, these prints showed remarkable craftsmanship resembling the likeness of the prints of old. One of the things I love about Japanese prints, is the color that is being used in a composition. How the colors are not vibrant but earthly, uniform in "temperature" and not fighting for attention. Such as the image up top, notice how the majority of the composition is supported by the variety of brown colors. This is one of the things that I admire about Japanese block prints, because it makes the atmosphere around the work seem "real". When I mean real I'm referring to the pressence of a more mundane surrounding; our world after all is not just a world of sunshine and bright colors, it is also gray and cold.

Dennis Hopper: A Second Look

Alright, so I have already confirmed with myself that one visit to Chelsea was not enough. Thus I returned to take another glance at a gallery that peaked my fascination the last time. The exhibition in which I'm referring to is Dennis Hopper's "Signs of the Times", an exploration of iconic 60's photographs, or so they say. My first impression of his work was nothing too special; a bunch of photos lined up against the wall, with a few blown up sized images sitting right next to them. I thought to myself, "oh Christ, not another one of these photo galleries, been here, done that, I've seen it all".

















Hopper does a good job in making me feel inferior

Yeah, that's what I thought, until upon closer inspection I noticed that the large scaled photos were not photos at all, but in actuality photo realistic paintings. Let's just say that my mind was blown out of proportion. Never in my life would I have ever imagined seeing such an accurate representation of a photo at such a monumental scale. Hopper's attention to detail and sensitivity to realism made even the best copy machines in the world look like a mockery. I may be a graphic designer, but that's just my concentration. When it comes down to it, I'm a hardcore fan of the fine arts.


















Strike a pose! (detail... THE DETAIL!)