To those who followed me with this, this has stopped altogether since I am no longer at West Kent College.
This was a good experience and I thank Sancha De Burca for teaching me about contextual art. Now I’m at uni I’m looking back at her lectures and information.
Please go to West Kent Colleges website about Graphic Design, these people helped me get to where I am today and I’m so greatful.
Megan
This site is discontinued till further notice.
On Wednesday, I went to the Tate Modern and looked around some of artwork that some artists have produced. There were plenty of art movements to look at, some were interesting to see in real life rather than on the internet.
An interesting part of the Tate is the Abstract Expressionism, thats only because of seeing the actual thing in real life rather than looking at a secondary image. Mark Rothko is a good example of that. Just by looking at the real painting you can see everything he’s done rather than just looking at a photo and seeing it for what it is he created altogether.
In the Tate you actually see what he has done with the work, the brush strokes and the layering of paint. For actually seeing it in the gallery Rothko expresses in his art emotionally through colours and the movement of the brush. His works are very big which gives you a good view of the painting means.
We also looked into Max Ernst, he was a big artist on Surrealism. The Tate Modern had a wall full of Max Ernst’s art works. When you look at Max Ernst’s works he has painted dreams or nightmares, surrealism was a very strange art movement but they come from the subconscious and some of the works are very textured with paint using surfaces to create a detailed piece of work. The textures are used in the work called ‘The Entire City’, it is a painting of a city like landscape that has big blocks of paint using texture. The ‘Entire City’ situates around a bright landscape in a dream like state as if it was the subconscious that made him have this kind of inspiration.
It isn’t just about the pictures that comes from the dreams. There is a variety of emotion that can be expressed from their dream like paintings, whether it is a nightmare or a dream. Going back to ‘The Entire City’ by Max Ernst, the city mainly looks like a palace as if it was an idea of heaven for Ernst. It makes the viewer feel like Ernst is giving off a happy emotion because of the brightness and the intensity of the bright paints.
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Pop art was part of the Tate Gallery, Pop art is one of the most liked art movements. Since the colours and the subjects are bright and outstandingly bold, it gives off a sort of delight to view a piece of pop art.
Roy Litchenstein was one of the main Pop Art artists of the time. He was recreating comic scenes using bright colours and the textured dots. But at the Tate they had Andy Warhols work on display. He was another pop art artist that had a keen interest in art but he found the techniques he used such as printing easy for him to do. The Marilyn Monroe prints and the Campbell prints are printed onto a canvas that he usually experiments with. He usually uses printing inks, he could experiment with the image on the canvas that can come out repeatedly to make rows of the same subject.
POP ART
Pop Art is a very popular art movement that was based in the mid-1950’s in Britain and the late 1950’s which moved to the United States. Pop art was used from popular culture such as advertising, news, etc. Pop art is also an art style for comic books and mundane objects. Pop art is very eye catching for the viewer in any way, the colours are bright and enthusiastic which draw peoples eyes to it. Pop art has been used for advertising and logos, such as Andy Warhols Campbell’s soup cans.
ROY LITCHENSTEIN
Roy Litchenstein is a very popular artist in the pop art movement. He was a leading figure in the movement who created bright images of large comic book panels, recreated in a colourful unique opposed to the original art work. He originally experimented with the Abstract Expressionism style, but it turned out differently to the pop art style he did later on. When he came across the idea of pop art, he used paint on a canvas to make a comic book image. He refines the image with think black lines to make a comic book feel to it.
His known trait is the dot texture that appears in his work. In his early pop art work he used the dot texture on faces and hands which makes it look different than a block colour for the skin.
Surrealism
The art movement Surrealism, is a cultural movement began in the early 1920’s. Surrealism is best known for their visuals and writings. The purpose of surrealism is to make artwork from a subconscious mind in a dream state. 
Artists had painted illogical scenes with photographic elements.
Max Ernst
Futurism was a very artistic and social movement which was originated in Italy in the early 20th century. It was expressing fast movements, technology and futuristic elements such as objects like cars or planes. The movement was a big phenomenon in Italy, though there were the same kind of art works in Russia and England. Futurists use many types of media, such as painting, sculpture, ceramics, graphic design, industrial design, interior design, urban design, theatre, film, fashion, textiles etc.
The cubism style was based off the futurism style which immediately took over from the futurist movement.
Abstract Impressionism: Abstract Impressionism is an art movement that is a type of abstract painting with only a small amount of brushstrokes which cover large areas of the canvas. On bigger canvasses and smaller brushstrokes, the artist expresses their views and emotions onto one piece of art work. They would focus all on their emotion and energy onto their artwork whether they are feeling happy or sad. It would depend on what kind of colours they would use and how they express their shapes either in a good way or a bad way. Looking at different artists such as Mark Rothko or Barnett Newman, their work is expressed through emotion and what they are thinking. Seeing their work in a real life compared to seeing photographs on the internet, will make you understand it more. Whereas just an internet picture would make you clueless on what type of meaning or point of this painting is. MARK ROTHKO We did a bit of artist research into Mark Rothko’s work and of course himself. Mark Rothko was a Russian Artist who began to create his work in 1923.
Mark Rothko – Rectangles and dark blue colours
We created a presentation on Rothko and his works. About his painting techniques and what the work means.
Presentation by Megan, Sol and Rowan
Painting Techniques
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vSiu8qzHV6c
AB EX NY: The Painting Techniques of Mark Rothko
Inspiration to take from this:
His work was abstract/expressionist because:
How does his work specifically fit in to the idea of American freedom of expression?
Propaganda from films
What sides (parties, teams, groups, opponents) are there? Names – official and unofficial. Your job is to “sell” one of these…
Good Side – The Resistance
.Kyle Reese
.John Conner (Mentions)
.Sarah Conner
Bad Side – Skynet (Terminator Program)
For each side list the following:
What is the side’s role? What are their aims? Why are they aiming for this – how will it help them?
Good Side: In the future the Resistance are on the verge of victory. But when the Terminators go back in time to kill Sarah Conner. They want to stop the murder so that her son could exist and lead the resistance. The resistance are fighting for human kind, so they can take back their world from the cyborgs. By going back in time so they can stop the terminator model from killing their leaders mother, otherwise her son doesn’t exist and the resistance would’ve never been created.
Bad Side: Skynet and their Terminator models in the future are failing due to the resistance. Their aims was to send the terminator model (Arnold Schwarzenegger) into the future to Kill Sarah Conner, so John Conner didn’t exist and then they can carry on with their plans.
What equipment, property, assets, do they have. How does this help them?
Good Side: Kyle Reese defends himself by using firepower to kill the Terminators. As he is the past with no way of getting back, Reese hasn’t got any assets but Sarah Conner who has no way of defending herself as he has to protect her.
Bad Side: The Terminators have normal guns such as machine guns and they use cars aswell as humans do.
What are the characteristics of this side? What are their strengths and weaknesses?
Good Side: As the Good Side is full of flesh and bone, but they are better learners than the Terminators. Their weaknesses are that they can die easily but they have emotions unlike the Terminators so that helps achieve what they want.
Bad Side: the Terminators are created by Skynet, a computerised source that has created metal framed skeleton disguised in human flesh. The Terminators are less clever than the humans, they have no emotions but they have a sturdy frame which is almost impenetrable.
How can you make their strengths into real selling points? (ie “cruelty” could be sold as “firmness” and “strength”). This is key so work on this
Good Side: Revolution- Taking back what’s once theirs.
Strength- They have the strength and the determination to kill the Terminators.
Protective- The Resistance protect their kind.
Bad Side: Power- The Bad Side seem to get more power than the Good Side. They have more terminators than humans.
Dangerous- having no emotion as it was taken away once they were human they turned into emotionless killing machines.
For our creative task we had to come up with ideas for Halloween food for a Halloween party. I had a few ideas such as
White chocolate Ghosts:- Using white chocolate and biscuit you would cut it into a shape of a ghost and place chocolate on there. The ghost could be decorated with sprinkles for the eyes if you wish.
Chocolate Bat Biscuits:- cutting the shape of a Bat into the biscuit base you can coat the bat with chocolate and you can decorate your bat using any icing or sprinkles you want.
Frankenstein Cupcakes: I had an idea of making cupcakes and using a mint green coloured icing to cover the top of the cake and then use icing to create the Frankenstein cake.
Graveyard Cake: creating a big cake covered in chocolate with chocolate made graves and using the icing to write words on the graves.
I only came u with a few ideas, but it was fun trying to think of different types of food for Halloween in a very creative way.
Dada or rather known as Dadaism is an art movement created in the Early 20th century of European avant-garde. Dada began in Switzerland in 1916 then it came to Germany and then took to New York. Dada was against war and the background of rising facism.
The idea of Dada is that they use nonsense which doesn’t make sense what so ever. They give the idea drawing the attention to the nonsense of society. They were against war and weaponry and they would use collage to explain it and use photo-surreal techniques to question meaning.
CREATIVE CHALLENGE
Dada poems are full of nonsense which nobody understands. To understand Dada Poems you can get a news paper and cut out words from different articles and pick out words without looking so you make a poem that is not understandable.
This is one created by an unknown poet who used words from articles to create this work.
This is one I have made on my own. As you can see not much effort has been put into this but Dada is probably the most interesting Art Movement that I’ve studied. Just by using words from articles and stuck down on a page makes it a dada poem. Whereas normal poetry you would have to have a good grasp at English and words.
megan graphics 