Henri Matisse and Susan Rothenberg

This canvas painting is made by Henri Matisse and it is drawn using oil.  This art style is sorta abstract because the other people around the boy is far away.  I depict that the two other women are the teachers.  And also is it just me or is that square object in the middle is a window?  But when I look closer is abstracts me to thinking that its not.

This is another canvas painting but its done by a different artist named Susan Rothenberg.  I felt as if these two paintings were both abstract.  The painting is called The Ponytail but it looks like the a women face in a side angle vision.  Maybe the artist wanted to show a big picture of something but wanted us to figure out what stuck out the most; and maybe she is telling us that its the Ponytail.

Henri Matisse's known for his use of colour and his fluid and original draughtsmanship.  Susan Rothenberg's style is a unique combination of representational and nonrepresentational traditions.  She potrays not complete figures but fragments, but of representation that seem to surface like memories in a nonrepresentational painting.  In the other hand, Henri shows the whole painting but makes is abstract.

Kitagawa Utamaro and Edgar Degas

This woodblock print is called Hairdressing, from Twelve Types of Women's Handicraft.  This is by Kitagawa Utamaro.  was a Japanese printmaker and painter, who is considered one of the greatest artists of woodblock prints.  In my opinion, a mother is combing her daughters hair like her hair.  The mother's hair is probably styled like that because it is part of her culture.

This Pastel work is done by an artist named Edgar Degas.  This artwork is similar to the Kitagawa's because the actions in the picture is similar.  In this artwork I believe that the housemaid is combing the daughter of the mothers.  But instead of having clothes, this women is nude.  Differentiating between these artworks tells you how Japanese's culture is more shy and casual.  In nude painting, it sems like its an American family.  Its sorta saying how American are not as shy as other cultures.

Utamaro's women are slightly stylized.  They do not strike us as particular people drawn from life but as types of women drawn from the imagination.  Their robes, too, are stylized into a series of sinuous curves.  Edgar Degas works in a naturalistic style.  The women seems like a particular person, probably a model who posed for him in his studio.

Art lecture week #4

Last week we watched two movies in class and discussed its similarities.  The movies were: Inception, which was filmed in 2010, and the Matrix, which was filmed in 1999.  We compared about how both stories were about reality and dreams.  In Inception, Leonardo is teaching Ellen Page how to architect the world in their dreams.  In The Matrix, Morpheus trains Neo how to fight in a different world.  These movies are both alike because they both have a "different" world.  We used these videos to discuss in class about what defines reality.  Glen then asked the class a question which was; "How could one tell if something is real or not?"  A student answered how our senses of emotion depicts reality.  "We smell, taste, see reality."  After our discussion we then planned a potluck that is going to happen for next week's class.  We are going to eat and make videos using our laptops.

Class Discussion

During our third week of class we learned about this pebble.  This pebble is called Makapansgat.  We learned that this pebble is a type of art but not made from a human being.  At first we all thought it was carved by a person but really it was created from water erosion.  We got to a certain debate about what objects can be referred to as "Art".  In conclusion, Glen says that "Art" is really based on human made creations.

 

The Trajan font is also what we talked about in class.  This font is very popular in the movie business because it creates such a ancient feeling when its being read.  Trajan is a over used in many DVDs.  We also watched and learned about how the trajan font is getting old.

Overall, we took plenty of notes in class about different time eras.  Glen showed a variety of art styles throughout different eras.  He asked us what kind of art we were interested in.  People said gothic and others said graffiti.  The only thing that dissapointed me about this class discussion is that Glen said we are no longer doing the field trips.  This is just a couple of few things we learned in class.

My first day of Art class!

Well class was not what I had expected it to be.  My friends and I were expecting to at least learn the basics of drawing.  What really shocked me was when Glen told the class that we are not really going to draw.  I walked in the class and sat down to a video that was already being played.  The video was about a group of people lip syncing to "Mr. American Pie."  It was somewhat awkward to me because I didn't know the purpose of watching the film.  We also watch another video titled "The Remix Culture."  That video was about remixes created by other students about the orginal "Mr. American Pie" video.

After learning a little bit about the videos, we took roll.  This roll call was not any ordinary one.  We all got into groups of four or more and interviewed a little bit about each other.  After listing down some facts, each student would have to introduce a different student in their group.  I thought that this was the best part of the class because I met new friends.  Another reason why it was fun because it was time consuming.  This took about an hour and really helped speed the class.  After taking roll, we took a break that helped us stretch and relax because its not easy to respect a class when its three hours long.  We got back from break and talked about the syllabus, class activities, and class expectations.  Our class is basically based on our blogs.  We post all our homeworks on our blog and use the blog website to see daily information about the class.  Another interesting fact that I heard about this class was that we were going to have class field trips.  Some field trip activities included: hiking, going to the beach, and potlucks.  Hearing about these class activities really got me excited to be in the class.  Even though we are not going to draw much in the class, I am still excited to learn what Glen has for us!