Closing Regards

This semester has been a combination of discovering newer forms of art as well as developing prior interests that I have had.  One artist that I had never heard of before that I have really taken a liking to is Dan Flavin.  His use of bright fluorescent lights in combination with minimalist and abstract forms, as well as architecture, is a concept that truly interests me.  It is something that I will look to incorporate into more of my work as an artist.  Sticking with the topic of architecture, our discussions of Frank Gehry and Frank Lloyd Wright have truly allowed me to better understand what I would like to potentially do with my future.  Another aspect of art that I will be taking more of a consideration in after this semester is the technical side of things.  I feel that it is important to not only enjoy a piece for its aesthetic value, but to also be able to understand what is going on behind the scenes of the work.

Exhibition Pieces Continued

Here are two videos of my piece from our end of the year exhibition last week.  The two videos show how the lights are interacting to the beats of different songs that are played in the background.

Exhibition Pieces

“Untitled (to those interested in light and sound)”   

"Hoboken: Day and Night"

Artist Statement

            Abstraction, bright lights, and neon colors are always an attention grabber in my eyes.  With that in mind, and a newfound love for the artist Dan Flavin, I decided to create a fluorescent light box, using the basic materials of wood, paint, and cold cathode tubes of light.  Much like Flavin, the idea was to keep the amount of colors used for the lights limited to just a few, so that I could test the different ways the lights reacted to one another.  Most of Flavin’s works were constructed in a symmetrical pattern, so that the lights formed uniform interactions.  With the idea of abstraction in the back of my mind, I thought of new ways in which to arrange the lights.  Upon sketching many ideas, and inspiration from yet another artist, Piet Mondrian, I decided to create an asymmetrical “grid like” design of both horizontal and vertical lights.  In order to add another element of interaction between the lights, I placed a layer of highly reflective aluminum foil along the back wall.

            With all of these considerations in mind, I hope to have created a piece that is aesthetically pleasing to all who are interested.

Walter Benjamin: The Age of Mechanical Reproduction

            In Walter Benjamin’s work “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” many aspects of art and technology are discussed, more specifically the idea of mass production of the image.  In the early part of his essay he writes about how the production of newspapers and photography led to the inevitable production of film that was accessible to a wide variety of audiences.  He wrote about how as time went on, there was no stopping the technology from continually advancing as well.  According to him, these technological advances had a huge effect on the culture and how the different classes of people were able to interact.  With artwork being recreated so easily, at a much more rapid pace, different classes of people were opened up to the arts availability.  For Benjamin, this is where the troubles of reproduction came into play.  He felt that authenticity, uniqueness, and the “aura” of a piece were completely ruined by the fact that it could be so easily replicated.  Now that the entire population was able to see artwork that only the wealthy were able to see before this time, the pieces seemed to become less meaningful in a way.  Although many would see this as a problem, there were also those who felt that with the reproduction of works, pieces lost their false importance that they once had.  All in all, the unique distinction that art once had was diminished by the age of mechanical reproduction in the masses.

Frank Lloyd Wright

      Frank Lloyd Wright was a very well known American architect.  He designed more than 1,000 projects and finished nearly 500 of those.  He influenced the architectural world in many ways.  The different styles that he undertook in designing his buildings were very unique.  His organic architecture was truly breathtaking.  In these homes he used many of the materials that surrounded the area.  He also used the natural landscapes to his advantage and built the homes on top of them while accentuating some of the features.  He is also well known for both his Prairie style homes as well as his Usonian style homes.  Although many of his works took place during the early to mid 1990s, they still seem extremely modern in today’s eyes.

      One of his most well known Organic homes is Fallingwater, which was built in southwestern Pennsylvania.  This house is truly remarkable.  It makes excellent use of the natural surroundings.  This home was partly built directly on top of a waterfall, which adds amazing aesthetic value.  This house also makes spectacular use of different cantilevers, which was seen as architectural “genius” during that time.  Wright got some of his stylistic ideas and features of this house from Japanese architecture.

      This house has received many different awards and recognition’s such as “the best all-time work of American architecture” in 2007 as well as twenty-ninth on the list of America’s Favorite Architecture according to the AIA.  Frank Lloyd Wright is an excellent influence on me as I look to architecture for my future.

Warhol Reaction

When Pop Art came about in the 1950s, it was seen as a radical movement that developed from the ideas of abstract expressionism.  Its main focus was to take images from mass culture and reproduce them in such a way that imposed a sense of irony on the viewer.  One of the masters of this type of art was Andy Warhol.  When he was developing his ideas for painting someone had told him to paint what he loved.  So keeping that in mind, his first major exhibition consisted of 32 of the exact same canvases with identical screen-printings of Campbell’s Soup Cans in the center of them.  The only difference being the flavor of the soup, which was meant to represent each of the flavors available at the time.  When asked about why he created a piece such as this one, he simply claimed it was because he had a can of Campbell’s Soup for lunch every day of his life!