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Pop Art: Andy Warhol

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Illustrator Andy Warhol was one of the most prolific and popular artists of his time, using both Avant-Garde and highly commercial sensibilities.

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Born on August 6, 1928, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Andy Warhol was a successful magazine and advertisement illustrator who became a leading artist of the 1960’s Pop art movements. He ventured into a wide variety of art forms, including performance art, film making, video installations and writing, and controversially blurred the lines between fine art and mainstream aesthetics.

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Micheal Jackson

Andy is very clever at challenging the subverted roles of famous and well known people. He sets them in a role through the technique of pop-art and recent art culture, to signify their characteristics and bring out their personality through colour and vivid lines and geometry.

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A collection of Andy Warhol’s Polaroids which he captured in the late 1900’s.

Some of Andy Warhol’s work includes that of Polaroids. Andy captures many of the risen stars of the late 1900’s through Polaroids in a technique of challenging their fame and why they are at the top. Warhol worked with the likes of Mick Jagger, in a way he wanted to show society what life is like in fame. Using a Polaroid also suppresses the normality and mundane surrounding regarding the characters chancing their role through a normal and reflective stance.

The images below are mine that I took during my time in Idaho Springs, Colorado. I thought this rustic and classic composition can work alongside his work in a comparative and subversive way. The edits I made of these images show how I’ve used colour and sharp edges to receive an outcome like Warhol.

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Below, I have created a grid in the style of Andy. I did this in Photoshop using a ‘web’ format to create this grid.I also used a layer mask in order to bring out the colours and vivid lines within the photograph.  Overall, I am very happy with the success of this interpretation, as I feel I have grasped his ideologies in society and how he uses art to encounter everyday life and its events. I feel as if my interpretations have really challenged and changed my approach when it comes to working with the public’s reactions and ideologies and how its chanced me to venture outside my comfort zone when approaching these interpretations.

 

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John Baldessari

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“I will not make any boring art”

John Baldessari is an artist that radicalizes ideas such as psycho-geography  and situationism. His approach to society and the public sphere radiate through his playful and symbolic works. His ideas suppress many aspects of chance, challenge, and change as John Baldesssari tests reactions of people who are put in the vulnerable position of interpreting his art.

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John Baldessari’s most early project was him self-erecting a fake $100,000 Bill At The High Line. His objective was to challenge the views of the public after the attitudes towards 100,000 dollar bills in the early Great Depression, that hit the united states in the 1930’s. It was recorded that only around 42,000 dollar bills were printed, ensuring that John’s work suggests severe importance and rarity which dates back to the time dollar bills where seen as such as a idyllic characteristic in society.  Johns expansion of this piece of art sticks out to the public as a figure of historic significance, regarding that money is a valuable and suggestive object which is precious to any growing economy.

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“Bill Board”

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Other works of John show strategic and abundant ideas. John chances his own ideas by showing his thoughts in a more modern, developing society. Here, John’s work ‘Brain Cloud’  shows how society looms over paradisaical and ideal aspirations.

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“Brain Cloud”
Analysis, Experimentation

Dadism

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Dadaism, is an art movement of the European Avant-Garde in the early 20th century.  Dada, in Zurich, Switzerland began in 1916 and was reaction against the horror and futility of WW1.

“Freedom. Dada, Dada, Dada, crying open the constricted pains, swallowing the contrasts and all the contradictions, the grotesqueries and the illogicalities of life” – Tristan Tzara, 1918

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Dadaism focused primarily against an art subversive to any traditional values and morals. This meant abolishing all logic and wanting to destroy the deceptions of reason. This meant that Chance and spontaneity:  what ever came along would be considered art in every form. This  was then considered a anarchical and irrational action and event which sparked emotions such as shock, surprise and scandal. This was all result on a wanted audience reaction, testing their taste and level of tolerance.

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Dada has influenced most of the 20th century art movements: Surrealism, Russian Constructivism,   Situationism, Fluxus, Pop Art, Conceptual Art, Minimalism and Performance Art.

Dada was used as a model of revolt for these movements, including influence from the ‘Sex Pistols’ and Punk rock.

 

Record / Photoshoot

My final outcomes

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ContactSheet-001These are my final out comes for Chance Change and Challenge, I choose to present the same performance in both stills and as a video because I think the video incorporates the audience more as you can see their reactions as they look at whats going on in disgust while others just choose to ignore what we were doing. With the stills you can only see moments of the performance which makes it more interring and makes you wonder what happened next. I also think that the stills look more appealing to the eye. I think that this performance fits in well with our project title and with Tom Pope’s work because it challenges what is and isn’t acceptable in society by behaving in a way which isn’t deemed to be appropriate in public spaces. I think this links back to my initial research about the Situationists and Space Hijackers and the idea of reclaiming public spaces, the water fountain was in a public area and I think we were pushing the idea of  “who said we can only look but not touch the monuments”.  Overall I am happy with how my final outcomes turned out.

Analysis, Final presentation

Final Outcome 3

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For this outcome, I have made a diptych of two images I made during the St Malo trip with Tom Pope. The top image is a graffiti-styled chalk drawing of an unhappy looking flower which I came across during our groups ‘drifting’ experiment. The bottom image is a chalk-drawing of the phrase ‘DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER’ – a reference to George Orwell’s dystopia novel 1984 . In the creation of this image, I used my study of symbolism, as presented in my manifesto and on a separate research blog

Top Image

The top image is a very satirical, clever and subversive image which uses symbolism in order to deliver its message. The depiction of a sad flower is interesting because the connotations of pain, sadness and hate are being connected to the theme of a flower, which is traditionally symbolized with beauty, delicacy and happiness. I find that this juxtaposition is therefore subversive and deeply contradictory of what is excepted. A deeper interpretation of this image is the concept of forced conformity and labeling by society. The fact that a symbolization of something labeled by society as positive could in fact have a negative connection, forces the viewer to question how accurate and meaningful conformity actually is on a practical sense.

I like how there is a certain intensity to this image. The bold, dark colour tones that is present, which I then emphasized by editing the image to black and white, helps to make the image more powerful and meaningful, as it adds a sense of sinister tone and edginess to it. This powerful visual display help the image to stand out more, and its mysterious nature is of interest to the viewer, inviting them in to question the purpose and meaning of such image

Bottom Image

This image is my depiction of the iconic slogan  ‘DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER’ from George Orwell’s dystopia novel 1984 by the novel protagonist Winston Smith in protest to the tyrinnical dictatorship of ‘Big Brother’. I created this slogan by writing it out in chalk on the streets of St Malo. This photograph relates to the theme of challenge.

The reference to this slogan is significant because it is symbolic of a protest against society and establishment. The term ‘DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER’, I view as representative of the general idea of protest and challenge. The fact that this term is fictional gives it a versatile use that can be applied generally to any situation. This protest that I have made is not therefore a specific protest but instead a general criticism of society that is adaptable to the viewers own perspective. I decided to crop out a large amount of the pavement so that the writing was as clear and direct and possible.

Images Together

I find that these two images work very well together because they both relate to the idea of being subversive and subtly challenging society through the use of symbolism. They also are both form of graffiti, which directly establish a relationship between them. As a final outcome, I find that this works very well because it sends a strong, but indirect message that requires a certain degree of interpretation from the viewer. Visually the two images work well together because they are both mysterious, bold images with display a sense of sinister tone. I decided to make the two images into a diptych because I found that this was visually more effective then display either or both of the outcomes as individual images.

Evaluation

Evaluation Day – Tom Pope

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Link to our presentation: France (Jemma Hosegood, Molly Carver and Sian Cumming)

On Friday 10th July, we had the whole morning with Tom Pope and Gareth from the Societe Jersiasie to come and review our final pieces. I was in a group of six and we had to make two presentations on what we had learned from this topic by presenting our final images/videos with research to back them up and evaluate what we thought of them. Our presentations lacked research therefore, I want to back up my ideas with there I got them from. The criteria we had to include in our presentations were as followed:

  • A wide range of ideas is explored with exciting and imaginative developments;
  • evidence of purposeful ideas, independence, perseverance and enthusiasm
  • Researches a diverse range of others’ work, conveying ideas and meaning;
  • a critical vocabulary is used to express an understanding of the more complex issues involved.
  • A diverse range of experiments;
  • extending and refining studies
  • risks sometimes taken
  • use a range of visual language skills
  • consistent command skills/technique
  • Selection of final material is clear and consistent
  • skillful outcomes that show a consistent level of knowledge, skill and understanding;
  • Work that has personal identity
  • final pieces well constructed
  • perceptive connections linking own work to sources

As a group our feedback were quite positive from everyone, but we did lack research which was our downfall.

The original perspective for the trip was to focus on getting audience reaction by doing something that was n’t socially acceptable/would be looked down upon but in a way that we weren’t actually being illegal. Also, videos that would capture positive feedback such as my flower giving. The flower idea came from a Facebook video that I watched, where this guy handed out gifts randomly to strangers as an act of kindness. I thought this idea was perfect to do in France but instead of gifts, I thought handing our a bunch of flowers would be a nice gesture. This was my favourite idea and best final as I did exactly what I wanted to do, which was get audience involvement in my videos. My other videos were much more spontaneous as we walked around inside the walls of St Malo and saw objects such as the cardboard boxes and the round-a-bout.

Evaluation

FRANCE

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Wednesday 17th June 2015

Everyone who did photography in our school went to St. Malo for the day with Tom pope (Photographer), Gareth (Archivist at  Societe Jersiaise) and our 3 photography teachers. The aim of the trip was pretty self-guided with regards to what photographs and videos we took. We were all inspired by Tom Pope’s work of performance photography and decided that we all wanted to come up with ideas that was similar to Tom’s by doing some bizarre things in front of public to try and see what type of reactions we would get. I previously came up with some ideas that I could do such as powder paint throwing which I decided not to do in the end and passing out roses to strangers. On the boat to France me and my friends came up with a list of things to do in St. Malo which we could perform, such as acting out scenes from films, freeze frames in shops, slow motion, meditating in the middle of streets, pretending to throw heavy balls to each other and many other ideas. As a whole, the day really inspired me to carry on with these ideas in Jersey and present some videos for my finals. I took more videos than I did photos which is defiantly new to me but I did enjoy.

My first video was of Tom Pope’s idea of trying to stack cardboard boxes in the tallest tower that someone could make. The reaction was not all positive as we had a few members of the public looking at us in disgust and saying this, and then the bin man drove over one of our bags and took the cardboard away.  I found this idea good as it was simply but got a lot of public interaction which was the aim. Here is the video:

My idea is of handing out a rose to members of the public to see what they thought of it. Some of the people said no because they thought I was selling them but it was difficult to translate why I was giving them out as I can’t speak a lot of french.

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Reaction

The idea of slow motion in a supermarket was also to get people to look and be intrigued as to what we were doing, however, people were  avoiding the aisle we were in so that they avoided hassle. But it was still good for experiment.

We went on the round-a-bout in the children’s playground to video movement/something different and fun.

Tom pope’s idea was for someone to stack cardboard boxes as high as they can in 30 seconds.

Lastly, we went to a little park in St Malo and pretended that our inflatable volley ball was a really heavy weight and played throw and catch with it, really exaggerating it. This really got the audiences attention which isn’t fully shown in pictures and videos.

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Evaluation, Mr T instruction

My Manifesto

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For my final ideas I have decided to stick with the movement of Surrealism for this I want to create images with no boundaries. To me surrealism is the creation of a new world, a new form of reality that is why I chose to focus on it. I really like the idea of having no limitations within my work and being able to come up with the craziest ideas imaginable and see how well they work out for me and whether some of the weird ideas from the depths of my brain come across well in the photographs. I think that this applies a lot to challenge as it is something very different to anything that I have ever done before in this photography course, it is a new style of performance.  I find it challenging for the model in my images as a lot of the time the ideas in my head stay in my head and I simply direct them and position them without them really knowing whats going on or what is going to be produced, I do explain all my ideas and progress my ideas. It is also challenging in the editing process as I need to layer the images and find new ways to develop my creations in order to make them look good and to come across how i imagine them inside my head.
frtfrblogThrough my work I plan to communicate a wider message than just a non sense surrealist image, which is what I think a lot of surrealist work has, a concept behind it. For my shoots I am going to name my project Invisibility Cloak, I decided on this name because it makes me think the most and I feel like a spectator would see this title and wonder what it meant and would make them want to read on. I have already done one of the shoots for my project and one of the images that I made reminds me of the Harry Potter films and when Harry receives the cloak of invisibility. Here I got an idea of what the message behind my project was. I think that we live in a world where everyone judges you on your appearance, the first time you meet someone it doesn’t really matter how hard you try to impress them because they’ve already made a judgement on you based upon the clothes you wear, how you’ve done your hair, how your makeup looks etc. Now I imagined what if we lived in a world were you can’t see any of that? And instead of hiding behind our clothes to cover ourselves up we use them as a way to be known to the world for people to see that we are living. I thought this would be a good concept and although it is quite cheesy I like the message behind it and I think it will make for some good images at the end of it all.

I’m taking a chance with this project because I think that a lot of people might not get it and might just think its strange, which is the risk element of this project but I like it and I haven’t seen anything EXACTLY like this before so it will be a good chance for me to show my skills and try and create some really good work. I have looked through many surrealist photographers and in the end I found two that I really like as I think their work is different and imaginative. The first one, my absolute favourite, is a photographer named Christopher Mckenney who specializes in horror surrealist photography, to me this is very interesting and is a huge risk to take because for a lot of people it can be too much. For example, I showed my parents one of his images [man holding gun to head] and they did not like it at all. My mum didn’t really get it and wasn’t keen on it and my dad just hated it because he thought that it was going too far and too much for an image. I explained to them what I thought the image represented [see earlier post] and told them the whole concept behind it. The next photographer who I really like is Brian Oldham as his work is very unique and I think has a deeper message behind it. He sticks to surrealist photography and has work which won’t make people as uncomfortable and Mckenney’s might for some.

Work from Christopher Mckenney
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Work from Brian Oldham

My Manifesto RULES:

I’m not really keen on having set rules for my shoots as I think that anything can happen and a lot of the time things that are unplanned and unprepared can turn out looking better than those that I have planned weeks in advance. If I had to give myself rules and limitations this is what they would be:
1. Keep track of time, don’t shoot when dark [creates more of a horror mood, which I do not want]
2. Allow models to have their own say and don’t restrict them to following the exact directions that I give to them
3. Remember to take a photo of the bare background before starting to shoot with model to make editing simple
4. bring all props and allow time for  preparation before shooting
5. don’t go crazy and make hard images to edit and change
6. stay in woods for first shoot and don’t mix locations [unless it looks good]
7. allow space for spectator to generate their own meaning behind the photographs, don’t make it obvious
8. no black and white images for this shoot [doesn’t allow for enough detail in photographs]
9. remember it’s PERFORMANCE photography so stick to telling some sort of story, performance doesn’t necessarily have to have a live public audience waiting, the spectator can see and image it for themselves when looking through images]
10. there are no limitations in surrealism or performance photography so keep strong ideas and allow them to be expanded

“So strong is the belief in life, in what is most fragile in life – real life, I mean – that in the end this belief is lost.” – Andre Breton [1924]

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ST MALO TRIP

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On this trip we went to ST Malo with Tom Pope, we got split into groups and went off to take our own ‘performance’ photographs. This is where we had planned for around 3 different shoots which we were going to take while we were in St Malo.

Here we could also use  the concept of psycho-geography and we could use the environment to inspire us, for this we walked around until we found something that gave us an idea. As we walked through and opening me and my group saw the carousel which was not turned on. So for this performance idea we went onto the carousel and spun the teacups on it and took videos of each other while spinning around.

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For this image i took a photograph of a man blowing some bubbles, i think that i could of improved this image by changing the composition and showing other people in this image, to get the ‘audiences’ reaction. However, i think that by just showing this man in this image makes it interesting as the man is performing for the camera and blowing the bubbles.

SHOOT 1:

For one of my shoots there was a man and his two dogs and two people from my group placed themselves next to the dogs and tried to reenact what the dogs were doing; which at this point was just lying down. st malo-1 st malo-3 st malo-4

I think that these images are interesting  because of the man in this image, by having the man in this image you get his response to what the two girls are doing, and he looks very concerned. We noticed that whenever you ‘performed’ in front of the camera it would attract people to look over and see what you were doing as they were very interested.

SHOOT 2:

For this shoot two of the girls went and sat down next to a man and copied his facial expression and his posture. As the man spoke french and did not really understand what they were saying he thought it was funny. st malo-5 st malo-6 st malo-7

For these images i tried to take some varied focal lengths when i was taking them, but i think that i should of changed the angles to make the images more interesting and get a more straight on view of them coping what the man was doing.

SHOOT 3:

For this shoot we were with Tom Pope and we carried around one of the girls through the town and she would have to direct us where to take her. st malo-98 st malo-99

I think that the top image is interesting because you have the people far away watching as if they are the ‘audience’ in this performance and they  were watching to see what was happening. From being on this shoot we walked past a fancy dress shop where we saw some costumes which the group where inspired by and started having a sword fight with each other.

st malo-100 st malo-101 st malo-102After we took these photographs the man and his son came out of the shop and told them to stop playing with the swords, i think it would of been good if i had videoed this and then got the man coming out which would of made a good video.

Analysis, Final presentation

Final Outcome 2

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In this short 60 second video, I got my friend to video me dribbling a tennis ball with a hand-held camera. This idea came very spontaneously to me and I had no particular objective or meaning behind it. The idea came about simply because I had my tennis ball with me and I dropped it, causing me to kick the ball before I picked it up again, which then gave me the idea to start dribbling it. I had no time-frame in which to complete the performance and it lasted as long as I felt was necessary.

Piecing it together

The free-flowing movement of the camera is important because it establishes a sense of rawness to the video, giving it a feel that is very natural, easy-going and unspoiled. The good quality of the actual film still means that aesthetically the film still pieces together well. My performance is also very simplistic throughout and I make no attempt to attempt any skill that is highly complicated, instead making what I am doing very easy to emulate, so that it is easy for most viewers to appreciate and understand.

Meaning

This video reflects the theme of chance because of the fact that it is a spontaneous event that occurred completely by accident. It was an experiment that I attempted without any idea of how well or successful it would turn out. I find this style of filming/photographing to be very interesting because the outcome is always uncertain, it could either go very well or very badly. This in itself adds to the excitement of the piece

The simplistic manner that the video was formed presents an element of challenge. By filming a successful performance without any of these sophisticated methods I am therefore questioning the need of traditionally accepted methods of creating film, such as editing, using a tripod and planning the shoot in advance. The style of the filming is therefore a subtle protest against these methods  

Influences

Dadism – I used the influence Dadaism by making my performance spontaneous, free-flowing and as un-structured as possible. By not restricting the direction of my performance it allows my work to be more creative and imaginative, using what I have and my current inspirations in order to construct the performance. The lack of direction links to Dadism because the disorder is a protest against structure and formality. Another aspect of Dadism that I will follow is  to be as subversive as possible. Dada movement artist were famous for their unusual and strange artwork and this eccentric style is a pattern that I will follow

Comedy – I will make my performance comical through the subversive manner that will go about my performance. I will deliberately run into the direction of the general pubic in order to test the way that they will react, hopefully creating a sense of confusion without causing any lasting panic or effect. Subtly within comedy is key for this type of performance, I want comedy to occur without it ruing or undermining the entertainment of the performance. I will take influence from French comedian Remy Gillard, who is famous for his satirical video whereby he tests the publics reaction to strange and unordinary events.