Industrialisation, Modernism and architecture.

1. Claude Monet and his family moved to Giverny in 1883 and rented a 2 acre property, Over the years of living there his family grew their gardens and eventually bought the house, Monet built on to the landscape and it became his inspiration for many of his nature paintings, with its ponds, bridges and water lilies, On which he worked on from the mid 1880s and 1890s through the end of his life in 1926, I think his intentions were to show the same subject matter but painted during different varieties of light and demonstrate how that light changes the subject matter. Chuck Close I believe he was trying to explore the relationship between photography and painting in terms of the human figure, based on the use of a grid as an underlying basis for the representation of an image.
2. Chuck Close’s process is a very time consuming one, with prints often taking over a year to complete. His process includes carving linoleum blocks then draws on them his subject matter and applies acid to his etching plates, and then personally directs all the handwork involved in pulp-paper multiples. Often Close collaborates with other artists to perfect his work and get new inspiration. Claude Monet would want to capture his landscape at a certain point in the day or evening when the suns light would strike and give him inspiration; this often called him to wake up at 3.30am to get the morning light, and then paint throughout the day using oil on canvas.

"Imagine a circular room...covered with [paintings of] water, dotted with these [water lily] plants to the very horizon, walls of a transparency alternately green and mauve, the calm and silence of the still waters reflecting the open blossoms. The tones are vague, deliciously nuanced, with a dreamlike delicacy." - Monet said to a writer friend in 1898,

http://www.cmoa.org/searchcollections/details.aspx?item=1011515

"I threw away my tools; I chose to do things I had no facility with. The choice not to do something is in a funny way more positive than the choice to do something. If you impose a limit to not do something you've done before, it will push you to where you've never gone before."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chuck_Close

4.         Both artists work with oil and pastels

Both artists subject matter was that of their surrounding either people or landscape

Both artists use a variety of colours both dark and light to express light.

5.      They use different techniques when making their work

Monet creates his observation of the scene whilst Close recreates it then abstracts it

Monet surrounded himself in his work and completed it single handed, whilst Close worked with other artists.

6.

I feel as though both these artists are exceptionally talented, I enjoy Close’s work because of its realism and how it makes for a a visually stimulating image that provokes discussion, but on the other hand I prefer Monet’s work for the fact that he built his surrounding to paint and dedicated his life to the works, spending nearly everyday painting towards a vision he had in his head

Reference:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chuck_Close

http://www.chuckclose.coe.uh.edu/learning/index.html

http://www.cmoa.org/searchcollections/details.aspx?item=1011515

http://www.worcesterart.org/Exhibitions/Past/close.html

Week 7-Industrialisation and Cao Fei's RMB City

The Industrial Revolution began in the United Kingdom and occurred between the 18^th and 19^th century. It was a period when people began to use power-driven machinery for manufacturing and also as a solution for practical problems which had a major impact on the agriculture, manufacturing, mining, transportation, and technology fields. It has had a huge impact on nearly every aspect of our lives today.

The painting “the City Rises” uses a fast blend of colours and motion, I feel, to show the rapid response to Industrialisation. The background is filled with the images of large scaled buildings under construction showing the city is literally rising and the foreground is a large blend of men and horses melted together perhaps to show the advancement of human work that is situated around a modern expanding city. The blend of images and forms, I believe, would make a viewer intrigued and want to stand closer and examine the painting.

The dominant image in this painting is a small black dog being walked by what I believe to be a woman judging by the low edge of what seems to be a dress. Giacomo was deliberately trying to paint movement, which in most cases is a very hard task, but I feel this painting represents it well. We see strong lines along the footpath as we walk with them, the woman’s stride is relatively short but seems to be walking at pace. I feel the way Giacomo painted the dogs’ legs is quite humorous as we sense the scurrying and shuffling as he attempts to keep up with his master as well as the leash to be swaying as they walk, a very effective artefact.

I think what Cao Fei was trying to express be her feelings on growing up in an ever expanding and developing country like China. The piece shows the city of Beijing in an almost state of disorder with an emphasis on rapid urbanisation, communism, socialism, and capitalism. With the figure of a giant shopping cart, filled with skyscrapers and religious monuments we sense Fei’s frustration on China almost buying its respect from the world.

A “Utopia” is an ideal society or group of people with perfect social and political beliefs and systems, basically an imaginary ideal place to live. Whilst a Dystopia is often a futuristic society that has slowly degraded into a negative shadow usually in an attempt to create Utopia, a Dystopia would usually have repressive control over social systems and a lack of freedom. I feel that Cao Fei’s RMB City shows a city that has such large ideas and aspirations in attempting to make one of the best cities in the world, or if you like a “Utopia” but at the same time has lost its identity along the way, instead in the future will be a large mess of what it once was, China being a communist country fits in well with the idea of a controlled political system that of which you might find in an Dystopia.

Whilst RMB City and the two paintings do not visually look similar I think the message behind them are similar in a way that Giacomo Balla and Umberto Boccioni paintings are showing physically movement in terms of blurring images RMB City is showing movement in a larger scale, showing the movement of a whole specific city and the future of that city, so whilst these artefacts do not look the same I feel they all showing movement towards something.