Walton Ford by:Heidi G.

Walton Ford was born in Larchmont, New York in 1960. Ford graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design with intentions of becoming a filmmaker. As Ford experimented with Watercolor he realized his talent with telling stories through his most times very large scale works.

Ford with an interest in political commentary and natural history finds a way to combine the two in his work. Ford likes to confront the continuing forms of oppression that still exist in todays society and how it effects the social and environmental landscape of our contry.

Ford has a huge interest in natural history and an interest in painting animals. He paints the animals with very realistic detail but always hides things in his paintings such as jokes, clues and erudite lessons in colonial literature and folk tales. In one of his paintings Ford depicts a scene where a bunch of baboons are furociousely eating at a dinner table. With immense detail you can see every hair on the baboons but also get a sense of the humor within the artist.

Ford has a great interest in the explorations of John James Audobon. Some of Ford's naturalistic paintings depict in many ways that of Audobon's naturalistic paintings. This sh0ws how Ford can paint realistically but at some points add in a twist of humor to his work.

Ford is still working today in upstate New York where he resides with his family.

(The information I found is on the website http://www.pbs.org/art21/artists/ford/index.html and from the Art 21 documentary on Walton Ford.

Oliver Herring by:Heidi Guthmiller

Oliver Herring was born in 1964 in Heidelberg, Germany. Herring received his BFA from the University of Oxford in Oxford, England. Herring then went on to receive his MFA from Hunter College in New York. Herring now resides and works in Brooklyn, New York.
Some of Herring's early works pay tribute to his close friend Ethyl Eichelberger, a drag performance artist who commited suicide in 1991. The ethereal sculptures he produced bring forth introspection, memory and mortality. The woven sculptures were created by knitting together pieces of Mylar into clothing, furniture and human figures.
After his sculpture pieces Herring moved on to making stop and go action videos. The materials he uses for his sets are recylced from one piece to the next. Herring's videos are very dreamlike and make you wonder if you are in the conscious world or the unconscious. The ending of his videos are always unpredictable and unexpected and always keeping the observer wondering what is next.
Herring's most recent work is that of making human like and life sized sculptures. He photgraphs a real life model from every possible angle over and over, he then takes the photo's and cuts them up and attaches them to the base of his sculpture; which is always in the same pose as the real life posed model. The cut pieces of the photographs becomes the sculpture. From a distance the human like sculptures look very real but as you get closer you can see all the seperate pieces that make up the sculpture as a whole.
Oliver Herring is a young artist with a considerable amount of need to experiment with many different mediums. From photography to sculpture to movie making this artist will be producing great works in the years to come.

(All the information is from http://www.pbs.org/art21/artists/herring/index.html and information I recieved from watching the Art 21 documentary on Herring.

Post modernism (by David)

Post modernism was an art movement that emerged in the late twentieths century, around 1976 and up. It was made in retaliation of the “Modernist preoccupation with purity of form and technique”. The movement strove to ignore the boundaries between different genres and embrace new ideas, forms and medias to promote comedy and irony. The movement was not limited to art but also effected architecture music, writing and film. Many groups of diverse artist emerged from post modernism. Gerhard Richter and Sherrie Levine were successful artist during the 1970s-80s while Michael Graves and Robert Venturi were pioneers in architecture. Others include novelists David Lode and Thomas Pynchon.

Postmondernism (Sean)

The term "postmodernism" is a term that is used when one is speaking about art that has come after the modernist movement. Installation art, multimedia, and conceptual art are all thought of as being postmodern art. Contemporary art is used to describe art since the 1950's, but not all postmodern art is contemporary; even some artists who still work in the modern or late-modern styles are considered to be postmodernists now. The term in and of itself is difficult to pin-down with definition. It can be said, however, that postmodern art is art that has arisen out of and/or rejects ideas in modernism.






Cai Guo-Qiang

PostModernism by (Dani)

Post Modernism is art, architecture, music, film, sociology, fashion, communications, technology or literature that goes against the modern principles by using techniques before like traditional or classical elements of style. It is a set of ideas that rebel against Modernism and the styles that go with Modernism. It is a difficult era to define because there is no specific time it started or ended if it even has ended.

Awesome Hands Artist Unknown

Untitled by Artist Unknown

The Hearst Tower in Manhattan

postmodernism (what I found) - abi

Postmodernism is best known as "20th century art." As opposed to the modernist movement where all historical influence is ignored, postmodernist embrace a lot of styles of historical art and apply them to modern forms. They created a whole new spin on art by using different forms such as video, intermedia, installation, and multimedia. Some examples of postmodern artists I found are Gerhard Ritcher:
Lawrence Weiner:
and Stelarc (performance art)

Neo-Expressionism ( by David)

Neo-Expressionism was an art movement that emerged in the nineteen-seventies and lasted well through the eighties. It was made in retaliation to minimalism and conceptual art. Young painters sick of the highly abstract art of the seventies brought back more traditional methods of painting such as easal painting. The painting style was intense and harsh, most of the time they were distorted figures or other recognizable objects but often overwhelmed by surface activity, most works had a very intense, erotic or violent appearance.

Neo-Expressionism was very popular in Europe and the US during the early to mid-eighties. Through out its course the style took on many different names including Punk art and new fauvism in America, Transavantgarde ( beyond the avant-garde) in Italy and Neue Wilden (new wild ones) in Germany.

Pablo Picasso's later works greatly influence Neo-Expressionism with his hurried visible brush work and distorted sexual figures. The new style also used ancient mythology, historic depictions and even novel covers as sources for their work.

German painters, Georg Baseline and Anselm Kiefer are considered the greatest contributers to Neo-Expressionism followed closely by Julian Schnabel, a very successful American painter. Other notable artist include Jean-Michel Basquiat, Arnold Mesches and Susan Rothenbuerg.


Georg Baseline

Anselm Kiefer

Julian Schnabel

Pop n' Op

Pop Art

Pop art was a movement that started in the 1950's. It started in Britain and moved to the United States. Pop art in the U.S was made up of popular cultural images and revolved around the ideas of consumerism and mass production. It related to the viewer much more than previous art movements had such as abstract expressionism art had because Pop art used imagery that the audience was very familiar with and saw on a day-to-day basis. Pop art can also be seen in graphic novels and comic books. Some of the artists that made Pop art were Jasper Johns and Andy Warhol. Pop art is relevant because it asks us to make the distinction between fine art and commercial art.

Op Art
Op art or optical art is an art movement that makes use of optical illusions. It is commonly referred to as geometric abstraction or hard-edge abstraction. It was first coined Op art in 1964 when Times Magazine labeled it in an article. Victor Vasarely was thought to have pioneered Op art with his painting Zebras. M.C Escher is another artist who is sometimes considered an Op artist. I personally believe that Op art came about in the U.S largely due to the mass amounts of psychedelics being ingested during the 1960's and 1970's. Does anyone else think that?

Maya Lin (By: Heidi G.)

Maya Lin was born in Athens, Ohio in 1959. Lin's father was a ceramist and the former dean at the Ohio College of Fine Arts. Her mother was a former professor at Ohio University. Maya Lin's aunt is Lin Huiyin who is said to be the first woman architect in China. Lin did a lot of studying at Yale University and Yale conferred upon Lin an Honorary Doctorate Degree in Fine Arts. At age 21 Lin won a public design competition for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington D.C. The memorial is v-shaped with one end pointing to the Lincoln Memorial and the other pointing to the Washington Monument. Lin's main goal in designing the monument was to create an opening or wound to symbolize the gravity of the loss of American soldiers to the Vietnam War. When making her architectural structures Lin wants to include the individual within the landscape she is creating. Maya Lin gets inspiration for her projects from many different diverse cultures. She finds great interest in Hopewell Indian earthen mounds, Japanese Gardens, and from American earthwork artists form the 1960's and 1970's. Ohio University commissioned Lin to make a punch card park, a park that the University actually wanted to resemble a punch card. The park at first was criticized because it seemed uninviting to most. It was an open park with mounds that lacked trees to shade students who would study in the park. Since the creation of the park some trees have been planted but from an aerial view the park still resembles a punch card. Maya Lin is one of the most well achieved woman architects and sculptors in America today. Lin now lives and makes art in New York and Colorado.
(www.pbs.org/art21)
(www.gagosian.com)

Minimalism (by Dani)

Minimalism is a movement that started in the 1950s and continued on through the 70s. The style of minimalism is to be very simple with little variation of colors, shapes and lines. The aim of this movement was to allow a viewer to experience the pieces of work more intensely and vigorously without distractions of the composition. The artist wanted no personal attributes displayed in their work. Is sometimes considered ABC art. Minimalism is considered very successful and has been influential to the developement of art in the 20th century.

Francois Morellet

Ellsworth Kelly

Ellsworth Kelly

Dan Flavin

Referenses

www.artlex.com

www.artmovements.co.uk/minimalism.htm

Krzysztof Wodiczko(by Heidi)

Wodiczko was born in Warsaw, Poland in 1943 and today lives in New York and Cambridge making art. Over the coarse of Wodiczko's life he has created more than 70 large scale slide and video projections of politically charged images. He projects these images on architectural facades and monuments all around the world. He projects these images on buildings to show the connection of architecture with that of collective memory and history. Around the time of 1966 Wodiczko worked with communities to pick chosen projection sites. Wodiczko wanted to give the silent citizen a chance to stand in the projection sites shadow and bring forward emotion. Because of this it brought sound and motion to Wodiczko's projections. This made an argument against the typical use of public spaces. They were now being used for projections of citizen's testimonies. He challenges the typical silent aspect of a building to represent verbal issues in our society today. He focuses on the notions of democracy, human rights and alienation that are in our present day society. Wodiczko also focused on ways of survival and healing for homeless people. He designed and made a cart for the homeless. A cart that homeless people could not only sleep in but also use. Wodiczko envisions his therapeutic devices as technological tools for empowering emotional trauma, distress, human abilities and economic hardships. Wodiczko in a sense uses sculpture as a type of therapy. Releasing one's emotions in a testimony is a form of therapy. But he makes his sculptures therapeutic by projecting them on architectural structures.
(I found this image on the Art 21 website www.pbs.org/art21, also from information I attained from watching the Art 21 segment on Wodiczko.)

Surrealism (Sean)

Surrealism was a movement and revolution of culture. It grew out of the Dada movement and reached its own in early 1920’s Paris. It quickly swept the globe. Among its members is its leader, Andre Breton, Max Ernst, Joan Miro, Marcel Duchamp, Yves Tanguy, and the most recognizable surrealist painter, Salvador Dali. The 1930's saw Surrealism come into its own and this is considered to be the turning point, stylistically, for many of the Surrealists careers. Surrealism continued well into the 1940's and many art historians argue over the true end of the movement. Some relate it to the end of WWII, some to Andre Breton's death in 1966, others still attribute it to the loss of Salvador Dali in 1989.

The surrealist movement is most notable for its visual arts. These works express a dream-like state, often with expansive, stark landscapes and strange figures and shapes populating them. Juxtaposed with these alien forms are recognizable objects and familiar forms that seem to skirt any sort of effort to make them any more tangible to the mind. Often the meanings of these visual works are mysterious and change between viewers. Among the artists, the final works were not seen as the act of Surrealism, but the artifact of what Surrealism really is, the strange happenings of the human subconscious.

L'Ange du Foyeur - Max Ernst

The Persistence of Memory - Salvador Dali

Time Transfixed - Rene Magritte

Works Cited
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surrealism

Cai Guo-Qiang (by Heidi)

Cai was born in Fujian Province, China in 1957. He studied at the Institute for Contemporary Art: The National and International Studio Program at P.S.1 in New York. Cai uses a variety of media including gun powder. He uses this to make a connection between viewers and the larger universe. His explosive events are not only visually pleasing to watch but also have an end result. That end result are his explosive drawings. He has a variety of forms represented in his drawings that also relate to some of his other work. Continually you will see a silhouette of a tiger in his explosion drawings that relate to his realistic stuffed looking tigers. In Cai's work he has a variety of symbols, narratives, mediums and traditions. The imagery he uses consist of things such as tigers, dragons, roller coasters and vending machines.
When asked why he makes his explosive drawings he will say something of the sort that it is a challenge to make something explosive and violent into something beautiful. He makes the explosive drawings to show beauty can come out of something usually used as a means of violence. In Cai's stuffed tiger exhibit he has many realistic looking tigers pierced with bows. He is trying to create a sense of sadness and emotion. The sad feeling you get when you see the pierced tigers is his ultimate goal.
I actually saw Cai's exhibit at the Gugenheim in New York last April. The show overall was incredible and definately worth the long trip to New York to see. There was an exhibit where he took an old sunken ship and filled around the ship broken ceramic pieces. Some of the pieces around the ship were manufactured ceramic religious icons. These icon's were rejections and were then considered garbage. Cai took the rejected pieces and spread them around the ship to show how the world of manufacturing is not necessarily a pleasant one. When I saw the tigers pierced with bows I really did get a feeling of pain and sorrow. His explosive drawings were amazing to see up close. The way the gun powder creates color and shapes is very visually interesting. Overall this artist explores new ways of making art and explores new mediums that most artists have never tried to use.
-I got this information from Cai's biography on the Art 421 website (www.pbs.org/art421) , I also got the information from my own viewpoint about the artist since I have seen his work in person.

Neoplasticism, By David.

Neoplasticism was a Dutch movement that emerged on the art scene in the form of sculpture and paintings in nineteen twenty and had a duration of around twenty years. (note that some contend that it emerged some what earlier)
It was founded by Theo van Doesburg. It dealt with the idea that art shouldn't simply replicate actual objects but should instead express the absolutes in life. Because of this the followers of this movement dealt only with planar elements such as horizontal and vertical lines and primary colors like yellow,blue and red.
Two of the artists that participated/developed this style are Ilya Bolotowsky and Pieter Cornelius Mondrain a Dutch native who helped the with the creation of Neoplasticism by founding De Stijl, a earlier movement that Neoplasticism was helped by. A good example of Neoplastism art by Mondrain is his “Composition with Red Blue Yellow” (second picture down)
Ilya Bolotowsky was another successful painter of this movment after moving from Russia to the Us and being inspired by Mondrian's work.
At the top of the page we see his “pale Yellow and Blue and Tondo”
Neoplasticism as a movement ended in nineteen thirty one after Theo van Doesburg brought fourth “Abstactio-Creation”
Work Cited
http://www.famouspainter.com/movements_&_artists.htm
http://wwar.world-arts-resources.com/masters/movements/neoplasticism.html
http://www.abstractart.20m.com/Neoplasticism.html

Abstract Expressionism (abi)

ABSTRACT EXPRESSIONISM (Abi)

Abstract Expressionism began in the early 1900’s, post WWII. Within the movement, artists express themselves mainly through color and form. The paintings that were created were most commonly non-representational, and lacking geometric shape, although Abstract Expressionist have roots from the Surrealists and Cubists movements. This caused viewers to be hostile and unappreciative at first, but like several other prior art movements, Abstract Expressionism and the artists involved eventually became successful . There were considered to be two groups from the Abstract Expressionism movement- the Color Field painters (Marc Rothko) and the Action painters (Jackson Pollock).

The styles of the movement usually consist of the look of “accidental chance”, which seems as if the artists were unconscious of where they were applying the paint. Through this style, the artists usually applied the paint with haste and spontaneity to their over-sized canvases to avoid any sort of representation. They sometimes used large brushes, and sometimes did not use brushes at all.

An example of this would be Jackson Pollock, who believed that the paint should never leave the quality of form that it is. Pollock would pour, drip, and throw his paint onto his canvases that were laying on the floor of his studio.




Other artists that were involved in the Abstract Expressionism movement included Marc Rothko, Hans Hoffman, Franz Kline, as well as many others.

Marc Rothko.

Hans Hoffman.

Franz Kline.

Bibliography:
http://www.artlex.com/ArtLex/a/abstractexpr.html
Gardner's Art Through The Ages Twelfth Edition, Fred S. Kleiner, Christin J. Mamiya, 2005 Wadsworth

Laylah Ali

Laylah Ali born in Buffalo New York now works in Williamstown, Massachusetts. At Williams College she received a BA and then went on to receive a MFA at Washington University in St. Louis. Due to Ali's small and precise subject matter it takes her long amounts of time to complete a work. Ali uses a comic- book style while at the same time references to stylistic traditions of American folk-art. Ali pays close attention to her color palette while planning out her subject matter.
Most do not know that Ali has an interest in socio political issues because her end results do not always depict such issues. She does however achieve a level of emotional tension because she uses juxtaposition by using bright colors with violent subject matter. Recently Ali has been using abstract biomorphic images but she is most well known for her paintings of gender-neutral brown skinned greenheads. She often depicts everyday things by using subjects like doge balls, sneakers and band-aids. Ali thinks of her drawings as more playful than her paintings, because of this she often looks back to her drawings when she is painting.
When I first Laylah Ali on Art 21 I did not like her work. But when I looked deeper into her work I could get a sense of her interest in social relationships and political resistance. The weird creatures she invents are not just random. She has a well thought out plan for every one of her paintings and the subjects in them have a deeper meaning than what you eye first sees.

Cubism

Cubism!!!!

Cubism came about in the early 1900's due to Pablo Picasso trying very hard to depict form in a new way. Picasso was influenced by by ancient Iberian sculpture, paintings done by Cezanne and African sculpture. He looked to these to find inspiration for a new way of painting. Les Demoiselles d'Avingnon (the young ladies of Avignon) a painting done by Picasso was the first painting he did that could be considered cubist. Instead of representing the five women realistically, he flattened them out, reduced them to shapes and gave them jagged edges. This gave tension of abstraction and representation.



One of the first people to view this work of art was Georges Braque who at the time was a Fauve painter. He was so agitated and challenged by it that he started to rethink his own work. Together, Picasso and Braque formed cubism in 1908.


Analytic Cubism- First stage of Cubism started by Picasso and Braques that rejects naturalistic depiction and preffered a composition of shapes and forms abstracted from the conventionally percieved world.

Synthetic Cubism- The second stage of cubism used objects and shapes cut out of paper and other materials to construct paintings.

Analytic

Synthetic

Bibliography

Gardner's Art Through The Ages Twelfth Edition, Fred S. Kleiner, Christin J. Mamiya, 2005 Wadsworth