Check This Out

For this edition of Check This Out I have a revolutionary resource to share with you. Art Project, powered by Google is an online resource that allows you to "explore museums from around the world and discover and view hundreds of artworks at incredible zoom levels." This powerful resource lets you  explore the museum floors (similar to the way you navigate on Google Earth) or just view the artwork. New users should click here for an overview about the site and how to get started.

Check out some of the museums on the list, which are some of the best in the world!
Google will continue to add locations so check back often.

Happy Friday!
-Denner

How to Create A Portfolio Using Blogger

Click Here for Blogger Portfolios or view presentation below

View more presentations from Victor Senior High School.

Technical Tuesday

Monday History

 

Edward Hopper

Early Sunday Morning, 1930

Oil on Canvas, 35" x 60"

Edward Hopper was best known for his painting "The Nighthawks," but it's paintings like the one above that make him one of the most important painters of his time.  "Early Sunday Morning" is just one of many paintings that Hopper did during the Great Depression that capture the mood of an era in a subtle but poignant way.  Below is an excerpt from one of my favorite Art History sites, Webmuseum.com:

"Edward Hopper painted American landscapes and cityscapes with a disturbing truth, expressing the world around him as a chilling, alienating, and often vacuous place. Everybody in a Hopper picture appears terribly alone. Hopper soon gained a widespread reputation as the artist who gave visual form to the loneliness and boredom of life in the big city. This was something new in art, perhaps an expression of the sense of human hopelessness that characterized the Great Depression of the 1930s."

http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/hopper/

Whether the subject matter was figure or landscape, urban or rural, Hopper (in my opinion) was a master of capturing time and place.  Enjoy the work and investigate further.

Check This Out

 

Sayaka Kajita Ganz

"Walker" 2008

20” x 36” x 12”

Reclaimed objects (mostly brown, black and clear plastic) and scrap metal

Sayaka Kajita Ganz

"Reclaimed" Objects Sculptor 

I like Ganz for her inventive arrangements of found objects. Her figures have enough information to read in a literal sense, but the areas she chooses to omit are what make the work interesting to me.  It's almost like viewing a cross-section in-the-round.
Read through her artist statement (below) and take some time to check her out by following the link above:

    My work process is reminiscent of my experiences growing up in several different countries, of being disconnected from the place I was born. Then, I began searching for a new community where I truly belong. I find discarded objects from peoples’ houses and give them a second life, a new home. For my sculptures I use plastic utensils, toys and metal pieces among other things. I only select objects that have been used and discarded. The human history behind these objects gives them life in my eyes.  My goal is for each object to transcend its origins by being integrated into an animal form that seems alive. This process of reclamation and regeneration is liberating to me as an artist.

    By building these sculptures I try to understand the human relationships that surround me. It is a way for me to contemplate and remind myself that even if there is conflict right now, there is a way for all the pieces to fit together. That even if some people don’t feel at home here and now, there is a place where they belong and that they will eventually find it.

 Happy Friday and as always, keep those pencils sharp and eyes open!
-Denner

Monday History

Jacques-Louis David

The Death of Marat, 1793

Oil on Canvas, 64" x 50"

Controversy in Art

Compare this heading to your initial impressions of this piece - what might make it controversial? Investigate a little about Jacques-Louis David and consider how is ties with the French Revolution have an impact on the message of this masterwork. David is considered by most to be the greatest painters of the Neoclassical movement and had a career that sounds more like a movie script than a story from art history. 

This excerpt from Wikipedia offers a quick glance at the context of this painting:

This work refers to the assassination of radical journalist Jean-Paul Marat, killed on the 13^th of July 1793 by Charlotte Corday, a French Revolutionary figure from a minor aristocratic family. Corday, who blamed Marat for the September Massacres and feared an all out civil war, claimed "I killed one man to save 100,000." 

Where do you go from here? Find out more about the background of David, who created many pieces that would crack the top 100 paintings of all time including the "Oath of the Horatii" and "Napoleon at the Saint-Bernard Pass." Enjoy these pieces and try to understand their role in not only the history of art, but of the world as well.
Happy Monday!
-Denner

Check This Out

 

Amy Casey

Between Cities, 12" x 16"

Acrylic on Paper

 

Acrylic on paper is a common approach to illustration, but Amy Casey's work is far from ordinary. The concept of urban vs. rural works well in her pieces, but the intriguing part about Amy Casey is the way she arranges her subject matter within the composition. For those of you looking for the equivalent to a professional "concentration," the work you will view on Amy's website is a great example of one. IB-1ers, don't just show me a printout of Between Cities, find other works by Amy Casey on her site and talk about the way you think she goes about creating these whimsical images.

Keep your pencils sharp and your eyes open!
-Denner