Materials With Meaning

In this assignment, I want you to choose your materials wisely; choose materials that will have meaning, that will help inform your content- Materials that a viewer can decode in a meaningful way. Use your materials as another part to your language, that compliment and inform your use of color, form, context, and composition. The assignment should be able to be discussed in the context of Painting Without Paint, using everything we have learned so far.

Monochrome

In this assignment, I want you to create a 'Painting Without Paint' that is monochrome. I want you to be aware of, and deal with, the problem of making an object have a 'painting attitude' without relying on color. So, think about all our previous assignments, all the things we have discussed that point to the conventions of painting, and use those tools to make a Monochrome painterly piece.

Mid-Term Resolutions

your new quarter resolution ( what you want from yourself for this last quarter, what you want to do, what your goals are, how you would like to be different, as a student, in this class, in school in general, as an artist) Due next week

CONTEXT AND MOOD through color and form,,, Remember there is no wrong answer,

In this assignment I want you to consider FORM and CONTEXT. In the same way we are looking to achieve a ‘painting attitude’ not necessarily a ‘painting’ in conventional terms- I want you to make your work have an ‘image attitude’ or an ‘object attitude’ i.e. have these things be prominent by using the characteristics of an image – and not necessarily have to exactly be an ‘image’ by Webster dictionary standards. While considering your work’s context- I have narrowed down your options severely by only giving wall or floor- but it’s always good to start with the basics. Not only should your work be on the wall or floor, but have an attitude about it that it says it needs to be where it is, whether it is wall or floor.
These boundaries I have presented (wall) (floor) ,(image) (object) are not definite restrictions; I want you to push their potential meanings. I have listed some dictionary entries so you may better understand what these ideas mean, and how you can use/manipulate them in your work.
In addition, I have given you adjectives, which I also don’t want you to be literal about… such as if your adjective is ‘jittery’ there doesn’t have to be any actual jittering going on, it should just have an air of jitter about it that is unspoken. Something that it is more felt, rather than read by a viewer. So, maybe you use color, or composition, use your imagination…
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In your case, the wall or the floor-
Context: 1 That which surrounds, and gives meaning to, something else.
2 the interrelated conditions in which something exists or occurs
context - The varied circumstances in which a work of art is (or was) produced and interpreted. There are three arenas to these circumstances, each of them highly complex. The first pertains to the artist: attitudes, beliefs, interests, values, intentions and purposes, education and training, and biography (including psychology). The second is the setting in which the work was produced: the apparent function of the work (to adorn, beautify, express, illustrate, mediate, persuade, record, redefine reality, or redefine art), religious and philosophical convictions, sociopolitical and economic structures, and even climate and geography. Third is the field of the work's reception and interpretation: the traditions it is intended to serve, the mind-set it adheres to (ritualistic, perceptual, rational, and emotive), and, perhaps most importantly, the color of the lenses through which the work is being scrutinized — i.e., the interpretive mode (artistic biography, psychological approaches, political criticism, feminism, cultural history, intellectual history, formalism, structuralism, semiotics, hermeneutics, post-structuralism and deconstruction, reception theory, concepts of periodicity [stylistic pendulum swinging], and other chronological and contextual considerations. Context is much more than the matter of the artist's circumstances alone.
When you look at a painting in the nave of a church, with stained glass windows and prayer candles and parishioners kneeling in the pews, it's quite unlike viewing that painting in a museum, where it is surrounded by informative wall texts, strolling visitors, a café and a gift shop. Go a step further, and imagine the same painting on a postcard that you take away, removing it to yet another container. When you see this painting reproduced on a T-shirt or mouse-pad, and think about how far it has traveled from its original context. Bertolt Brecht said of art that has been reproduced and transformed into a commodity: "...it will no longer stir any memory of the thing it once designated." Also see art history and art criticism.

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In your case, object or Image
Form
Form (Lat. forma Eng. mould), refers to the external three-dimensional outline, appearance or configuration of some thing - in contrast to the matter or content or substance of which it is composed (compare with shape).
The word form refers to a phenomenon. Thus a speech may contain excellent arguments (the matter may be good), whereas the style, grammar, arrangement (the form) may be bad. "Form is supposed to cover the shape and structure of the work; content, its substance, meaning, ideas, or expressive effects." (Middleton 1999, p.141) The term, with its adjective formal and the derived nouns formality and formalism, is hence sometimes contemptuously used for that which is superficial, unessential, hypocritical.
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Object Color mixing Example

here is an example of the type of Joseph ALbers theory I was hoping that you could research on your own and find... He didn't actually mix colors, he alluded to the phenomenon with sophisticated and sensitive color placement.

Things due for 25th

Welcome! And here is some homework!

First assignment: Color
I want to see some color mixing with found objects. I want at least three instances of colormixing with found objects- the form, material, composition, content, subject, are up to you- but be prepared to explain and defend each of those aspects of the work. I don’t want to see a homework assignment; I want to see your art, your interpretation of the problem I am presenting to you. Need help? Look up Joseph Albers. Read about him. Know him.

Things you should mentally and physically prepare for Friday 26th :

Sign up on Blackboard- start discussing

First Forum in the morning led by Jess and Diana (these people place and article in the envelope outside the door by Sunday) (everyone else pick up article and read)

Critique of first assignment

Slideshow of some artists to know prepared by moi.


“ The truth may be out there, but the lies are inside your head. “
Terry Pratchett
Now go show me your lies, see you next week.