I chose the Andy Warhol video because he is an artist I’ve heard of and I knew he had a unique style. The text and the video give similar descriptions to Warhol’s life. He was a commercial artist turned pop artist in the early 1960’s. He started out as a painter and gravitated to silk screen, photography, and videography. Near the end of his works he put painting back into his pieces. Warhol used celebrities for his subjects as well as commercial products like Coke bottles and Campbell’s soup cans. He is probably best known for his work in silk screening, often very large pieces with multiple images of celebrities like Marilyn Monroe and Elizabeth Taylor. The video states the he preferred this method because of its mass production properties. Once he made an original, an assistant could produce copies. This enabled him to earn more money. Warhol was obsessed with the celebrity culture and lifestyle. He used them as subjects and dabbled in his own film making with the newly developed video camera. He himself may have wanted fame as he often did self portraits. The text mentions a near shooting of Warhol in his apartment, known as the Factory because it was covered in foil and silver paint. Although the video does not mention the shooting in does show the apartment and the carefree lifestyle that took place there. The video talks about his other obsession with death. He has pieces with plane and car crashes, skulls, suicide and more. Some even say his silkscreens are death like because they strip away the life of the subject. I like how the video goes into great detail how Warhol made his silkscreen. I previously had a basic idea of how it worked but this really showed the process start to finish. It also showed the effect and imperfections on the artwork. The video was also helpful because it gave a little visual insight to the pop culture era and gave additional details about Andy Warhol.
I also chose the video Hockney on Photography. My dad is a photographer and I enjoy playing around with it. My daughter also has desires to learn more and get more involved in photography. Hockney is a photography artist. This is a bit different than a photographer. He uses his photos, in a collage or grid type method to create, or as he says, draw with his camera. Hockney’s large piece of people looking at people looking at a photo with the photo also on he side is an amazingly interesting piece. It’s interesting that although his work may show more than one set of hands or the human face split up and shown more than once, the human brain and eye lets the viewer overlook that and see what is really there. He played around with perspective, space and distortion. Hockney sometimes took photos of his paintings as well, again playing with perspective. He is an artist of several mediums and doesn’t stick to strictly one method. He even worked in theater and set work. His work with trying to capture the Grand Canyon was really a deep thought process. That is not a subject one can just look at and capture either with paint or photography. He broke it up into pieces and discusses how the eye needs to constantly scan such a piece. He tried to create movement within his work also. Sometimes he would take pictures from all views to accomplish this, even using a ladder in the dessert.
The video touches on similar ideas that were mentioned in the Living with Art text such as the development of the camera obscura. It also relates Hockney’s visual perceptions to that of cubism. The concept of cubism, as described in the text, contains multiple views of a subject. Hockney often arranges his work in this way.
I found the video very helpful and informative. It was not what I was expecting as far as learning more about photography and its process. However, I learned about a whole new form of art using photos and photography. The video was also good because it was the artist himself describing his work. This was especially informative as some of his pieces are confusing otherwise. A quote from Hockney that I love is, “The beauty is in the process of seeing”. In other words, everyone has his or her own idea of what is beautiful and what has meaning. This also sums up his ideas on why he works in the way he does.
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