GDAD final show

Today we had the opportunity to visited the GDAD student’s final show. There are a lot of impressed works for me. I have learned a lot new knowledge through these wonderful work. I would like to introduce one of them to describe.
“Universe” is a installation art work made by Puyu Dong. He used wooden frame, wooden board, nails, threads, barbed nets and tree trunk pieces to make a “Loom”(textile machine) to describe his own understanding or thinking of the universe. In the human history, people had different understanding for the universe in every defining moment. Even nowadays, we are not sure that our knowledge must be right. So he try to use this kind of “machine” to try to express human’s exploration of the universe and create several philosophical thinking for universe and life. Although the form was a little simple, probably because the time was not enough, in my opinion, his research process is very interesting. I also have researched similar concept before about life. Hope we can have the opportunity to discuss this topic.

Tate Modern Museum

On our last school trip, we visited the Tate Modern Museum in London. It was not very strange for Chinese students due to the famous Chinese “artist” Ai Weiwei has displayed a famous art work there. He putted a lot of sunflower seeds on the whole ground in that exhibition. However, there are also a huge number of other great art works such as the three “most influential artists” in 20th century---Picasso, Matisse and Dali.

That must be a precious chance for me to see these masters work in close way. Previously, I only saw them in books. Among them, Matisse is my favorite artist. He was the representative of the fauvism. His works had the feminine of impressionism and the rigorous of the cubism. In the later period of his career, he has used paper cut as the form of his works. He said that the paper cut is just like use the scissors to make a sculpture on the paper. Those kind of work including a lot of east philosophy consciousness. I also want to use paper cut as a main carrier of my future works, his works and concept has a deep reflection for me.

some ideas after watching the "Maker"

“Maker” is a movie which introduced several great contemporary designers. It shows a lot of brilliant ideas. All of these ideas have a deep relationship for our society,  they really opened my eyes. However, what impressed me most was a saying in this movie. A designer said: someone may think the my “art idea” is not useful for people’s daily life. But if you said art was created for someone. Every art might be useless.

I really agree with this opinion. To be honest I have been asked such question like “who did you design for?” when I was interviewed by some “famous” university. I really wonder that this kind of “concept” still exist today. Previously, artists had no choice due to they must create for the “noble”, “church” or “royal family”. A good example in the art history is Caravaggio’s two “Saint Matthew” oil painting. He must change the Saint Matthew more “beautiful” due to the church’s requirement, although the first one was much more vividly. So if we have still said art is used to service for others, it might be a little bit strange.

Project 3

Our group's name is called"J&C", which means our majors are Jewellery and Ceramics. We come from different countries including Taiwan, Thailand, Japan and China. I am so proud of our teammates that everyone worked so hard. We all known we got the responsibility for the team. We often took a long time meet after class although everybody was tired, no one complained. In this process, we have learned how to be strong and brave.

During this project, I got the responsibility to do the research for our project. The topic is "identity", I got our inspiration from these two concepts below.

Firstly,“Identity”means people survey themselves, people want to know who I am. It’s a kind of self-inspect. Our object aims to find people’s “consciousness” in spirit level. The concept inspiration is from Jacques Lacan’s Mirror Image Theory.It is considered about the first time that people started to survey themselves as a infant is when they saw the mirror image of themselves. It’s the origin of human’s consciousness, called “mirror image stage”. (after that the Freud’s “Oedipus stage” was appeared).

Secondly, During the art history, there is a similar concept called “introspective art”. We adopted the inspiration of Modigliani, who is called the greatest Italian artist in 20th. Throughout his painting career the eyes in Modigliani’s portraits are “remarkable”, often he represents them as blank.People can use their eyes to see the whole world, but we can’t see ourselves totally (without a mirror). So the target that people in the painting wanted to survey is themselves, like the artist only talked to himself.

Through this project, the most important thing for me is that we have learned how to cooperate with others. We helped each other, learned a lot of things from my teammates. I really appreciate this experience.

Art review of The Invisible Boundary

The work from Seyeon Park was attract me yesterday, it's called "The invisible Boundary".

Seyeon made a radio that she was "making up" in front a mirror, she was wearing flour in her face constantly. Through the artist statement by Seyeon, I recognise that she chose the flour to hide herself in the mirror, and then enable another eye's perspective. She wanted to see what's the reflection from people after they watched this "strange" action.

That makes me remember the "Mirror theory" from Jacaueo Lacan(one of the most famous psychologist in France). I am not very sure whether she has read this theory and got her concept from it before talked with her---in fact she did not know Lacan before. However, I can saw some Lacan's reflection in her work. In the Mirror theory, Lacan believe that there was a special phase called "Mirror Phase" during the babyhood of human, after which the Freud's "Oedipus Phase" was just appeared. Lacan said that there was a moment when people was a infant, they recognise themselves in mirror at first. At the beginning, they thought the mirror image was others, after that they found that were themselves. This process was the earliest consciousness of human. Later on, people can recognise others gradually. Seveon's idea is quite similar to Lacan's theory. Obviously she can recognize what does she look like in other's eyes through the mirror.

In my opinion, Seveon's work is quite conceptual and meaningful, this is the most crucial thing in art creation. To be honest, the content is a bit simple, maybe the main ideas couldn't be expressed enough, that's my suggestion.

Summary of my art review

I have visited all three museums, the Ashmolean museum and the Pitt River museum were very impressive for me.

First of all, to describe the exhibition called “God in colour” in Ashmolean. Professor Vinzenz Brinkman colour the replica of ancient Greek sculptures as much as beautiful.He wanted to show what did the disappeared sculptures look like in Olympia, because they only leave a host of bases there now.

Secondly, I saw a great sculpture called kouros(youth) also in Ashmolean.It is a replica of one of the ancient Greek brother sculptures.It was a milestone of the whole human art history,  Egypt artists had ever use their knowledge as the foundation of their art creation, however the Greek artists began to use their eyes.Finally, they were successful, and this success has still reflect the human art history so far.

Lastly,  I visited the Pitt Rivers museum and was attracted by a great art work called “Haida totem poles”.This totem pole is from the Haida community of Masset. It originally stood outside Star House, which belonged to the chief of the tribe.In the natives' eyes, it was a very solemn and serious work, they need several years to carve these huge poles, sometimes the whole village need to help to do this, because it's their chief's glory and honour. It's amazing. Their works are quite different from our contemporary society, making them was not for skills, it's due to the concept.

Interpretation and Evalution

In the primitive society of America，artist had already held some refined method to express the figures in the figures in the myth. Obviously, they were almost hunter, so they must know a lot about the shape of animals. However, they believe only a shape feature could be used to describe them. For example, it is so hard for ordinary people to understand what's the meaning of the Haida totem, but native American Indians understand those poles tell people a old legend.

"Once upon time, there was a young man in Gwais Kun, he lied in bed almost every day, his mother in law was very angry with him, so he left shamefacedly. At that time, there was a monster in the lake, always eating human and whale. So the young man decided to kill the monster, god's bird helped him, he use some tree trunks to be the fish pole, hanging two children to be the bait. Then the monster was killed, he dressed the monster's leather to catch fish, and then put the fish in front of his mother in law's home, she was proud and told everyone she was the witch who has supernatural power, after the young man told her the truth, she was ashamed to die."

All of the figures in this story were carved on the totem.

In the natives' eyes, it was a very solemn and serious work, they need several years to carve these huge poles, sometimes the whole village need to help to do this, because it's their chief's glory and honour. It's amazing. Their works are quite different from our contemporary society, making them was not for skills, it's due to the concept. These works are even earlier than the Egypt art, the latter was considered to be the source of art of human being and has more reflection for contemporary art. However, in my opinion, those kind of original art also leave us a great civilization to appreciate them, making us move.