http://www.contemporaryartdaily.com/2016/10/hayal-pozanti-at-rachel-uffner/
Pozanti's art is based on exploring the relationship between humans and technology. All of her work is derived off of an alphabet she created out of symbols and shapes. These works either celebrate humanity's distinctions from technology or explores the relationship on a deeper level. Her colorful sunshade paintings combine organic and inorganic shapes. I really like how these paintings look, their rhythm and movement are unique. It's a very interesting concept to explore, and it's a unique topic only available to us in contemporary times. I may decide to incorporate some ideas from this exploration into my own content.
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Mark Demsteader is a popular figurative painter in the UK. His works utilize pastel, charcoal, and paints to create atmospheric figurative works. I know figurative and realistic works aren't at the pinnacle of contemporary art currently, but Demsteader and others are still successfully innovating in a very saturated field. I really like how subtle and tight the figures look, and their very loose portions give them a sense of movement. At the same time, many of his pieces lack backgrounds, and I don't know if I really like that portion as much. I might consider practicing with paints or pastels more just to explore the effects they can provide.
The drawing is going how it goes. I matted it before I left on a trip, but the real issue is that I feel as if a background is needed for it. I need to find what sort of content I want behind my art before I end up with this same issue again.
For my home project I planned out to meld geometric shapes with different elements of the human figure. I might end up combining this idea with a few figure sketches that I have in my sketchbook.
The most nuanced point I found in the two readings was brought up by Giuliani: what should public funds be dedicated to? His logic was that taxpayer money should not be utilized to finance an exhibition that was not tasteful, in his regards, to the general public. A counterpoint was that exhibitions which provoke thought and discussion are perfectly suitable for public funding. In essence a part of the controversy boils down to what benefits the public. This point of contention also resonates with the other article dealing with censorship in Russia.
In Russia many of the censored groups and works dealt with issues such as religion and class in a controversial manner. The government usually forbade these commentaries on the grounds that they instigated religious hate. Generally there is a trending theme that art can have a heavy degree of social commentary and influence, and in accordance to that theme, governments often have a penchant for regulating it. The article about Russia heavily implied that the country's regime understood art's power in society. However, it's a stretch to say that Giuliani thought that the exhibition in New York was going to cause unrest in the country. In fact he himself probably caused more unrest by trying to censor the exhibition. There is a distinction between the articles about censorship used to maintain control over a regime and censorship used to protect arbitrary moral values. The two readings proved to illustrate the ambiguous role of censorship. Also, the transcript about the New York exhibition proved that societal values are not homogeneous across a community, which further mystifies what censorship should be used for or if it should be used at all. |