Research - Kandinsky's color theory

I've been looking at musical interpretations in art and have come across the work of Wassily Kandinsky. He had complex theories about synesthetic relations between colors, sounds, and feelings. I always liked Kandinsky's work, but I didn't know that much of it was inspired by music. It reminds me of string theory, which basically says that everything is composed of "strings" vibrating in space. This means that everything that there is, is all basically the same thing, "strings" vibrating at different frequencies, that everything is one extremely complex and brilliant song, here is an image that hopefully can explain it a little.


I am very interested his ideas and find myself in agreement with a lot of them. Not only that, but I feel like I already know his theory, like it is something that is a part of existence and a universal experience to some extent. I was further convinced when I was reading an article about his ideas about how certain colors lend themselves to certain shapes.

He believes that yellow calls for an interesting intense shape like a triangle, red an "intermediate" shape like a square, and blue corresponding with a "dull" shape like a circle. I saw this image and then thought to myself, what shape would green be? I imagined a softened, slightly unevenly shaped hexagon. I scroll down to find that, though not exactly the same, his idea is very similar to the image I had in my head.


I'm going to try to use his theories in my interpretations, for example Kandinsky also states that different colors can be represented with certain instruments, like light blue is a flute, dark blue is a cello, and the darkest blue is an organ. These ideas will be a good base for my musical interpretations of a scene. I want to try and 'play' a photograph using his ideas about color and perhaps some of my own. I feel like I sometimes have synesthetic inclinations and I want to try and focus on these feelings and bring forward a better sensitivity to these correlations. Though I don't play that many instruments, I have the means to use them in my work through digital music software, though I'm not sure if I want to go that route or not.
Here is Kandinsky's Composition VII, I think it's interesting that he titles his work as compositions or improvisations, like music.

Wassily Kandinsky, Composition VII, 1913, dimensions and medium unknown

Artist - Terry Winters

Today I want to talk about Terry Winters, Tom suggested I look at him in our last meeting and he was right, I do enjoy Winters' work. He was born in New York and has studied art since high school. He received his BFA from Pratt institute in 1971. I like his work for a lot of reasons. It is messy and loose, which adds an element of action to it not just in the way it looks, but the method in which he made it. When painting, I like working quickly as well. It seems to make me work more intuitionally, rather than relying on logic to make the piece 'work'.

Terry Winters,

Much like what I am trying to do, he uses a lot of designs that are taken from nature, patterns that appear to be like those on leaves, or in this one, I see butterfly wings and cocoons.

Terry Winters, Free Union 1883
oil on linen, 79 x 104-1/4 inches

I also enjoy the colors he uses. They tend to be natural and subtle and remind me of color choices I have made in my paintings.
Aside from painting he also does a lot of drawings and lithographs. This series of lithographs appears kind of cosmic to me and I enjoy the patterns created in it.

Terry Winters, Tokyo Notes, 2004
Set of 9 lithographs with title and colophon pages
Edition of 30
Image/Sheet size: 22 1/2 x 30 1/4 inches each

Research

I got a couple of books, one by Andy Goldsworthy and another about Mark Rothko. In the book about Rothko, it talks about "The Artist's Reality" which is a book of his writings about his work. It sounds like it has some good information but I am having trouble finding it anywhere. What I have found though is some good information on how Goldsworthy goes about doing his work. He says that everyday he goes out he makes one or two pieces, but in a whole month may only get two that are successful. This shows me the importance of creating lots and lots of work. It reminds me of something I read a long time ago about a crafts teacher who had one of his classes focus on creating one great ceramic bowl. In another class he had the students create as many bowls as they could. He found that the class that made multiple bowls generally had better bowls than the class that tried to make one really good bowl. I guess to understand your medium and allow for more freely flowing ideas you must really explore and experiment with your subject. I should attempt to create several pieces a week and with quantity, quality will come. Something else that struck me was how Rothko thought about the early masters of painting. He didn't like Michelangelo, and was not too fond of DaVinci either, he more preferred Giotto saying "Giotto's work had tactility, appealed to the sense of touch, the most concrete evidence of an objects realness." He used this in his work and I think it is important to mine as well because it is through this that I can perhaps use my focus on texture to express the 'realness' of nature.
On Sunday I think I will talk about Terry Winters, who Tom suggested I look at. He does a lot with patterns and textures as well, here is one of his images.

Terry Winters Display Linkage, 2005
oil on canvas
102 x 132 in. (259.1 x 335.3 cm)

Artist Blog - Richard Long and a little on Mark Rothko

Today I am writing about Richard Long and Mark Rothko. Richard Long is best known for his land art but he is also a sculptor, photographer, and painter. He has studied at the West of England College of Art and St. Martins School of Art and is currently represented by the James Cohan Gallery in New York. A lot of his work is based on or created by taking walks. For example Long creates lines on the ground from walking back and forth in A line Made by Walking (1967).Richard Long, A Line Made By Walking, 1967

I also does sculptural installations using rocks, usually arranged in either a line or circular manner.

Richard Long, Wooden Line, date unknown

Some of his work is in the walk itself, in one he walks an outstanding distance until he sees a cloud


and another he writes down something for every minute of an hour of walking in a circle.

Richard Long, One Hour, A sixty minute circle walk on Dartmoor 1984

He and Andy Goldsworthy have really gotten me excited about using nature as an element of my work. I really love their style and I've been thinking about how I can incorporate it in my work. So I started thinking about their technique of drawing attention to nature through the use of nature as art. I also think their process of creating is important too and want to participate in the sort of meditative quality of collecting and creating the work. I was reminded of some paintings I did in 2004 using mud and found materials.

Justin Lewis, Texture Field,
wood, steel, canvas on canvas, 2005, 18"x24"

These were inspired by one of my favorite artists of all time, Mark Rothko. I've always enjoyed his color fields and I felt this piece as an extension to what i call texture field. I want to use similar techniques to my texture field mixed media work but instead use nature as my canvas and materials. I want to enlarge them to make large scale color/texture fields using natural colors and textures of leaves, berries, or rocks in natural settings. I also am interested in the ephemeral, which is seen a lot in Goldsworthy's work and I will include in my documentation. I'm thinking of video documenting the process of making the piece and then natures process that destroying it and of course including a photograph of the finished piece before it's destroyed.

I wanted to mention Rothko as well because I am interested in his his ideas about using these color fields to create a mood or feeling. I also enjoy the mechanisms he uses in most of his work. I'm hoping I can use his color field theory to create senses of urgency or longing in my work.

Untitled1947
Artist: Mark Rothko (Russian-American 1903-1970)
Medium: Oil on Canvas
Dimensions: 121.0 x 90.1 cm

No. 14, 1960, by Mark Rothko, oil on canvas, dimensions unknown

I don't know if this is the right posting for some of this, but I have been struggling with finding a focus and method for my work this year, I realize that my original idea of photoshopping lacked my real involvement and my video performances aesthetically didn't speak to me(I've never really enjoyed performance art and I found the final piece to be boring) I feel like I have finally aligned my interests in aesthetics, subject, and purpose and I needed to write it down. Hopefully it will be successful when put to action.

Research Blog

I've found some books about and by Bruce Nauman, Robert Smithson, and Gordon Matta-Clark, and I'm starting to think maybe I'm an idiot because it just seems like a lot of nonsense to me. I'm no philosopher, but I think I should be able to get something out of these books. Of all the books and essays I've looked at, I've found only one about Andy Goldsworthy that has some information that I could understand. I've always enjoyed Goldsworthy's work and am very interested in its subtlety and complex simplicity. The writing about Goldsworthy mentions that his work is often criticized by environmentalists as being too passive. "The thinking goes that if the house is on fire do you make a pretty tower out of chairs?" But I feel more like the idea is that everyone is in the house with matches and gasoline and maybe a pretty tower of chairs will distract them. I feel like this indirect approach is valid and useful to consider. Also I watched Thomas Reidelsheimer's documentary about Goldsworthy, "Rivers and Tides". Here is a clip from that:


In it he talks about his process and ideas about his work. One thing he mentions that I found very interesting was he describes his work as "a way of understanding; Seeing something that was always there, but you were blind to it." He has made me think that I need to be more sensitive to the subtle natural effects and processes in my work, I recently shot my video of me with the water filter and am now thinking I should include imagery of the ripples made by the pitcher, and for my next shoot with the inhaler, I should put some focus on the way the air and mist interconnect. I think nature should be the vehicle of my aesthetics. Something visual and stimulating that can illustrate a small section of the fractal complexities of nature and life.

Artist Blog

Today I want to talk about three of the artists that Jeff suggested to me; Gordon Matta-Clark, Bruce Nauman, and Robert Smithson.

Gordon Matt-Clark:

Gordon Matta-Clark, photographic print, title, date, dimensions unknown

I enjoyed the encompassing effect of Matta-Clark's collage photographs. Though they are two-dimensional, they convey a sense of three-dimensions; even when displayed small, on a computer screen. I imagine large prints are even more exceptional. I watched some of his videos as well, but was not as impressed, I suppose I just didn't get it.

Gordon Matta-Clark, Conical Intersect (detail)
1975

When Jeff was explaining Matta-Clark to me, at first I thought he was talking about the guy who draws lines and shapes on interiors that, from a certain perspective, appear to be 3-d geometric shapes within the room. I can't remember his name, but I much prefer the way he deals with interiors rather than Matta-Clark's physically cutting away of sections.

Bruce Nauman:

Bruce Nauman
"One Hundred Live and Die"
1984
Neon tubing mounted on four metal monoliths, 118 x 132 1/4 x 21 inches

Though Nauman is apparently one of the most important living contemporary artists, I didn't really like much of his art. I did however enjoy some of his word art, such as the above piece, I feel like it kind of breaks down the duality of life and death. I like his approach to art-making as well. He says, “If I was an artist and I was in the studio, then whatever I was doing in the studio must be art. At this point art became more of an activity and less of a product.” This is important because I am now trying to move away from these images that I see as products, and more to the activity of the performances I have planned. He works in a variety of mediums including film, sculpture, installation, and performance, similarly to how I like to work.

Robert Smithson:

Robert Smithson, Spiral Jetty, 1970

Robert Smithson, Yucatan Mirror Displacements (1–9), 1969 (detail). Nine chromogenic-development slides.

I've been interested in Smithson's work for a long time, but I've never seen is Mirror Displacement series until recently. I really enjoy how the mirrors redirect and project colors from the surrounding area, almost like magnified color samples. There is also his most famous piece, Spiral Jetty, which in being enormous and looking really cool, draws attention to the environment, nature, and natural processes. I think I want to use similar devices to also draw attention to the environment.

Thursday research post

When looking at Sebastien Lemms work, I read that he is informed by some ideas of Romanticism. I looked into this some and found that I too am interested in some the ideas of Romanticism such as that of the sublime. I have been referring to my work as Eco-art however, after further research I believe it may also have correspondence to the ideas of Neo-Romanticism. Another artist whose work is considered Neo-Romantic as well as Eco-art is Andy Goldsworthy. I have always been very interested in his work.

A collection of works by Andy Goldsworthy

I think Neo-Romanticism s important to consider because many of it's ideas correspond to my work. I feel a sense of belonging to and attachment with nature and want to share this in my work. I think some of Neo-Romantic themes are present in my work as well such as (what I feel to be) utopian landscapes. I'm also considering imagery of nature reclaiming our environment. I've also got some books about cities as ecosystems and how cities and urban development are related to the environment. I think these could give me some inspiration about how I can depict cities integrated with the environment.
To further my understanding of some ideas of Neo-Romanticism, especially the aesthetics of it, I have found some writings of Arthur Schopenhauer. His philosophical work on aesthetics is considered to be of great importance to Neo-Romantic thought.

Artist Blog - Sebastian Lemm

Today I want to look at the work of Sebastian Lemm. While his work is not eco-art, it is inspired and informed by nature. Almost all of his work includes nature as a subject. I like that he continually creates incredibly interesting work of images of trees an the sort, otherwise banal subjects. Like myself, he is interested in the human interactions with nature, though it may not be necessarily apparent in his work. He is also interested in the ideas of the sublime and romanticism.
His work is important to mine because essentially I think he is interested in the same things and is working in the same way as me. His more recent work digitally manipulates simple images of nature, just as I am doing. I've been studying his Photoshop techniques for ideas that I could use in my work as well. He has also given me some sources to read into to further my own work.

I think I like the idea of his series Strata better than the work. It has the problem of if you've seen one, you've seen them all. But it inspired me to think of a good title that will perfectly explain my piece.
From his Strata Series:

Sebastien Lemm

	strata # 5 c-print on Kodak Ultra Endura wooden frame size: 48x60" (121x152 cm) – edition of 3 2008

Lemm points at the sublime in his Subtraction Series:

Sebastien Lemm
subtraction # 1
Lambda c-print on Kodak Ultra Endura
wooden frame
sizes:
24x30" (61x76 cm) – edition of 5
48x60" (121x152 cm) – edition of 3
2006

Shattenseite translates to "shadyside" or dark side, drawback, or disadvantage.
When applied to this work I see the points of convergence in the mirror images as hindrances to the plant's growth. The mirror patterns, while the patterns almost appear to be like natural fractals, the still seem unnatural.
From his Shattenseite series:

Sebastien Lemm
schattenseite # 1
Lambda c-print on Kodak Endura
sizes: 25x30" (63.5x76 cm) and 48x60" (121x152 cm)
edition of 3
2005

His series entitled Lapse is by far my favorite, I am a bit jealous of it in fact. I see it as a structuralizing of nature, the landscape being split apart giving way to these linear, unnatural shapes. I feel it is a perfect visual metaphor for humanities effects on nature.
From his Lapse series:

Sebastien Lemm
lapse # 2
Lambda c-print on Fuji Crystal Archive
Diasec, 25x30" (63.5x76 cm) and 48x60" (121x152 cm)
edition of 5
2004

T.S.E reminds me of that artist we talked about last year who created 2-D lines and shapes on walls that, from a certain perspective, appeared to be 3-D elements in the room. I couldn't find him because I couldn't remember his name, but I always enjoyed his work as well.
From his series T.S.E.:

Sebastien Lemm
t.s.e. # 6
installation: variable dimensions
Lambda c-print on Fuji Crystal Archive paper
variable sizes
edition of 5
1999 – 2004

Research Blog - Sustainable De-growth

I'm still in search of the "glue" for my project so I've been doing more research and I came across an artist whose work really interested me, Sebastian Lemm, I will talk about in him my next posting but I would like to include one of his images here because I think he is working very similarly to how I want to work.

Sebastien Lemm
lapse # 1
Lambda c-print on Fuji Crystal Archive
Diasec, 25x30" (63.5x76 cm) and 48x60" (121x152 cm)
edition of 5
2004

But for now, I want to talk about sustainable de-growth. I've been reading about how 20% of the population consumes 80% of our resources. And though a lot of work is being done for sustainable development, for this 20% any more development can not be done sustainably. For this percent I propose that de-growth is necessary and want to suggest the concepts of simple living and downshifting as a solution. De-growth is an idea first written about by economist Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen, other proponents include Ghandi, Tolstoy, and Thoreau. I think these are ideas I might want to include or hint at in my work. Simple living basically suggests that more is not better and downshifting, as a method of achieving this, emphasizes comfortable moderate changes in order to arrive at slower lifestyle. I think I'm going to read up on some Thoreau and Tolstoy.
I also want to talk about water. I am becoming more and more keen to including water somehow as a key component of my work. I've read that water is a central element of a lot of environmental art, just as it is an essential element for life. Most religions see water as a purifier and many participate in ritual washing as a form of ablution. It is the most destructive force on earth but it also has properties on the other side of the spectrum; it can be very calm and inspire peace and tranquility.