Thematic Crit - body/gender

Aesthetics visual political how our bodies exist in the world

Body interesting- can show emotions, feelings, variations, how people judge you on your body, what you choose to show, what parts of the body mean, quick judgements, how it means something to you. How do you choose to present yourself as a being, how this effects others. Within each society/culture all sorts of visual languages impacts us use those signs to dress ourselves. Sub cultural groups 

Comparison

Have to be open minded as an artist

Bodies in art: 

Anthropomorphic 

Maria Abramovic - body as art

Just male artists, commisioners, is that why lots of naked females painted 

Painting females self indulgent, familiarity

Womens body more interesting, more natural - because we've been taught that's natural

Subconsciously choose what your baby will look like - choosing your partner

Use your body as a commodity - spectators, freak shows, capitalism, money, politics have effects on our own bodies

Sarah Lucas

Not important that I've experienced it more important that these experiences exist

Control - images of other people

Make connections in your own head that other people can't see 

Art is a speaking platform

Stuck to our own limitations - trying to achieve equality but only looking at female body - all have access to

A lot of art is asexual about other things. Sexuality is rarely present in art but a huge part of all of our lives. That's what's good about feminist art over the past years

Concluding thoughts: bodies are interesting, all human

Celebration of the body, non sexual

Individual Tutorial

Duchamp, Gerard richter: travelling and the body. Movement.

Dialogue between the paint and the body - paint is the body and vice versa

Sigmar Polke:

Works with oils and acrylic combined. Combining the two in my work will change the control I have over the paint - not familiar with it. Have control over my body. Have no control over other people's bodies. The relationship between control and the body and paint. 

Why the human body: always liked portraiture, aesthetics of the colours of the skin, using blues and greens and pinks - unnatural and usually ignored and forgotten by the human eye. Particularly appealing and intriguing to me. Painting with green originated in the Renaissance and pre Renaissance. Painted green as the base - many reasons, undertones of the skin, veins etc.

Change up the sizes I paint at. Have three big pieces on the go at once so you can vary between them, have different ideas going on at the same time, compare. Also work small and try to fit all of the same information and ideas that I had on the bigger pieces on a small, compressed piece. 

Want to work really big - maybe my exact height by my exact art length, almost a self portrait. Becomes about the movement of my own body and the application of the paint than the subject itself. Paintings and sculptures that are lifesize have a different sort of meaning to them - sort of come to life.

Vary between large brush stokes showing movement and big gestures, contrast these to small, detailed, meaningful, delicate brush strokes. Or maybe not even small and detailed but more skilled and deliberate than the usual bold gestures I am creating. 

Working with encaustic wax to create more texture to the work - Frank Auerbach - thick body of paint, gestural, abstract, sort of reminent of the body/portraiture. 

Katie Moran works from an  image - turns it upside down and works from it abstractly. Uses it as inspiration not directly. Colours and texture etc. 

Working large scale - where to buy a large enough piece of canvas? Stretcher bars. Try transparent primer so working onto a different background, might be good for my work. If can't find transparent primer use 1/2 and 1/2 PVA and water for first coat, then 75% PVA, 25% water for second coat.

Working onto board another alternative, prefer canvas.

Large piece of developing work

Added some extra texture to one of the smaller pieces. 

Drawing Workshop: automatic

Open for own interpretations

Automatic writing - drawing

Pure psychic automatism

Andre Breton Secrets of the Magical surrealist art: conecntration, passive or receptive state of mind, forget genius, talents and talents of everyone else. Draw quickly, without any preconcieved subject. cooncious crying out to be heard. as literally or as playfully as you wish. apparently random marks made by non art materials

Freud's idea of dreams, desires, fears. 

Secret unconcious resevoir or dialogue between concious and uncooncious

Extending the drawing after the session: share images with the group, analytical readings (of one anothers), collective automatic drawing

Chaplin brothers - exquisite corpse

Like a form of meditation. We know what day date time it is - forget all unnecessary information 

digital age - so distracted and influenced. pull you back into the here and now. when you're asleep, when your brain is trying to process 

We started by getting our equipment and getting into our own space and then just started.

This was my first piece, I began by just scribbling as I had no idea how to start as I got into the rhythm of it and deeper into blocking out the noise my scribbles took shape and were more free flowing. After I finished the page I took a photo of it and went back over it where I could pick out words or letters. This became more difficult than I thought as few words were coming out. The idea of this was to either find words I had subconsciously written in my scribbles and/or to find words that forced themselves out of the scribbles that were in my subconscious mind while looking at the work. 

Couldn't find many words. Weird considering the scribbles look more like letters than my first piece.

I then tried to just start writing. Real words and sentences. I began by just writing writing over and over again as again, I did not know how to start, I thought if I just start writing it'll come to me. I do not understand what I have written it is not anything I have thought in my concious mind, I am very confused and I do not enjoy reading it back. 

Did not enjoy the writing however did enjoy the idea of getting into a state of mind where I am fully relaxed and almost work from the subconscious. Will try at home with drawing/painting.

Try at home listening to music, on my own no distractions, quiet, home alone. Really difficult when people around you and making noises.

Talk afterwards debrief: 

Layering - concious moments and unconcious moments 

Colours important in work and life 

Kyle: Illustrations within the words - illegible but was writing

Spur ways to approach things - link to what I'm investigating?

      : Usually Manipulate people's work - interesting to use my own words but not really knowing what I'm writing. Relationship between appropriation and own text

Victoria: always but not known been working with the subconscious. Colours reflect mood. About texture and colour 

Agnes Martin Tate 

Interested in freedoms this task was sort of freedom of myself. Usually work with stitching but liked using pastels

Patterns between text and drawing 

Helpful to development and practice 

Developing work

Over the last week, I have been generating a few ideas, following my seminar presentation. 

Here are some key points I am experimenting with:

Ambiguity - Painting the body in a way which isn't obvious it is the body - use of skin tones and textures. Painting close ups and large scale. Completely changing the perspective changes the mindset. Also try painting really small, but really zoomed in.

The skin, Removing politics

Felt really inspired by the Aesthetics lecture and seminar this morning - research this further, read texts etc. how can I introduce this into my own work.