Jack Hodge Internet Research Project: Contemporary Drawing

Jack Hodge

April 9th

Art 106

Internet Research Project

Artists I liked.

Monica Höll

"Crazy Drawing Room" - Ink on Walls, "Everything is Possible" - Ink on Paper

Her work attempts to create familiar stories, and then suddenly shift to abstract imagery to confuse and delight the viewer. Personally, I like how vivid and thoughtful the work is. Almost comic book like. 

Ann-Marie James

"Bernini and Other Studies; Plate V and VI" and  - biro, acrylic and Pantone Tria pigment ink on found book page.

Ann-Marie's work really stood out to me. I love how the work leaves the borders of the piece, and transcends the art world and enters the real one. I also like the modern interpretation on classical themes. 

Jessica Nissen

"Cowboy Red Scarf" - Ink on Paper, "Vasquez Legs" - Ink on Paper

These drawings by Ms. Nissen really interested me, as they are her interpretations of popular Rorschach test cards. They provide an insight into her psyche, as well as a playful picture of a fantasy world. 

IC-98 (Patrik Söderlund & Visa Suonpää)

"Theses on the Body Politic (Colony and Riket)" - Pencil on Paper, Digital Animation

I love these isolated glimpses into a mysterious and alluring world provided by IC-98. Letting the artists speak for themselves, "The drawings can be characterized as narrative constructs, blueprints of the possible or scripts for action. They don’t close on themselves but act as condensations of diverse fluxes, both linguistic and affective – they open up to point something out or to bring something together, like collages". 

Joy Drury Cox

"Every State I Ever Set Foot In" and "The Old Man and the Sea"- Ink on Mylar

Of all the new styles of art this project helped me discover, the most surprising to me was constructivism. I really enjoy the simplicity, and graphic rigor the pieces embody. They are clean, understated and refined. 

 

Reflection on my favorites. 

Looking at the pieces I selected as a whole, a few things become quite clear. First, I tend to prefer monochromatic pieces to those with lots of color. Simple is best I guess. Secondly, I really seem to enjoy pieces that combine classical themes with modern overtones. This is especially clear in the pieces by James, Nissen, and IC-98. I also really connect with pieces that take complex themes and simplify them to their most essential form, as is evident especially in the pieces by Cox and Höll. Subtle touches  of color serve as focal points and clues to the meaning of the piece. For example, the red of the cowboys scarf, or the light blue highlights on the figures of the angels. I have always preferred more modern art, yet I appreciate when artists draw inspiration from classical sources. Art is extremely subjective, but I hope you can appreciate these artists as much as I did. 

Art I Did Not Understand or Appreciate 

Mikhail Gubin

"Convoluted Thinking" - Mixed Media on Paper

Similar to graphic pieces I really enjoyed, yet overly complex and convoluted for me to appreciate. I understand the message the artist is attempting to communicate, I just don't enjoy the piece aesthetically. 

Lille LoCurto and Bill Outcault

"telamon[2]" - pigment print

This body of work is also very geometric, yet it demonstrates an aspect of art I don't find pleasing, extreme abstraction. The artists used a 3D scanner to capture an image of the human body, and then printed it in 2D. The resulting image is interesting, but not my cup of tea. 

Anne Allen 

"LHND #1" - Pencil on Paper

While I tend to enjoy pieces that are more minimalistic, this piece is too minimal and abstract for me. The piece is question is an abstracted Dollie. 

Nichole van Beek 

"Extra Gay Fish Tank"- Acrylic on Canvas

The piece gets points in my book for the name. Very unusual and made me laugh. However, this piece just doesn't appeal to me. The composition and color palate remind me of backgrounds for 90's motivational posters, or ironic t-shirts. Overly complex, yet at the same time, doest say anything to me. 

Amy Stacey Curtis 

"1 Inch" - Graphite on Paper

This is a perfect example of when constructivist minimalism is underwhelming. The artist asked strangers to try and draw a 1x1 inch box without using a ruler, and then she combined these estimations to form the final piece. 

Reflection on These Selections

I understand that all of these works of art have merit, but they did not speak to me. The final three are in the "Meditative" school of art, a style I have only recently discovered. While it does present intellectual challenge, meditative art does not appeal to me at all. It seems that pieces that are overly complex or too simplified don't appeal to me. Additionally, as I suspect is common, art that is extremely abstract does not catch my eye. Perhaps as my tastes develop and evolve, I will be able to appreciate these works as much as the pieces I selected as my favorites, but today is not that day. 

Favorite Artist

Ann-Marie James 

(Bernini and Other Studies; Plate IX, VII, VII), Her Head Was Confined In a Treetop

(Top to Bottom, Left to Right) - Graphite, Oil and Acrylic on Canvas

Of all of the artists I discovered, James was my favorite as she perfectly combined classical influxes from the statues of Bernini, with modern graffiti influences.  James states that she enjoys taking classical pieces like these, evaluating their form and purpose, and transforming them with modern media to alter their meaning, without totally destroying their purpose. To put it a different way, I think James is taking a sentence in English and translating it into a different language. The meaning of the sentence is the same, yet the form is different. That is the playfulness and the meaning of her art. 

Another important aspect of a piece of art to me, is the "could I live with it" factor. I am sure we have all seen pieces of art that upon first glance really catch our attention, however it is difficult trying to imagine living with it, and being able to appreciate the piece every day. I think art should be enjoyed, and someday I hope to be able to collect it. I want art that overtime I see it, brings me joy and evokes a feeling of curiosity and appreciation. These pieces from James do that for me. 

Finally, the color palate James used in these paintings really captures my attention. I love how the drawings of the Bernini sculptures are in graphite, while her "modifications" are in cool neutral tones of grey and purple. The final piece is abstracted more than the others, but reminds me of wood prints from Hokusai. Complex, abstract, yet still intellectually and atheistically pleasing to me. 

Final Project: Artist Statement

The Intrigue of Images: A Multiple Artist Case Study

Cool Artists:

Xanti Schawinsky: "Head Drawings and Faces of War" (1941-1946). Mixed Media. Watercolor and black pen.

Deals with the struggle of an artist coping with identity and the struggle of war (The Drawing Center)

Natalie Frank: "The Brothers Grimm" (2011-2014). Gouache and Chalk Pastel. 

A psychological twist on what stories we all know and love. She takes the familiarity of the fairy tale genre and twists it into something unfamiliar (The Drawing Center)

 

Abdelkador Benchamma: "Representation of Dark Matter" (2015). Mixed Media. Black pen, India Ink, and charcoal against the gallery's white walls.

Creates striking large-scale drawings. This one in particular, was meant to create a vortex representing the highly complex nature of black holes (The Drawing Center)

 

Paul Chiappe: "Untitled Series" (2010). Pencil.

Verging on the psychologically dark and creepy side, Chiappe creates small hyper realistic drawings that replicate old photographs (The Drawing Center)

 

Lebbeus Woods: "Architect" (1988). Media not specified. 

Woods takes what is physically represented in our world, and changes them to depict something psychologically different. This feeds into his narrative of how our constructions feed into our beings (The Drawing Center).

Reflection: I chose these artists as some of my favorites, based off of the website The Drawing Center. This website houses a huge amount of artists' work, all of which is featured on their site.

The above sequence of images are from artists who really captivated me. As you can see, we can create similar underlying themes that each drawing has in common with each other. By doing this project, I realized that I am more intrigued by images that shape reality. When artists twist and contort what is psychologically already familiar to us, I find this really fascinating. Not only this, but the media used in these drawings can be fairly complex, but it does not necessarily have to be (as we see Chiappe's and Schawinsky's works done with only a few tools of art). These pieces are highly intriguing in that they make us question what can be considered 'art', and draws responses of how we each view art differently. We each find fascination in varying images, and techniques that are created by artists.

(Subjectively) Not as Cool Artists:

Jackie Ferrara: "Lines" (1993-Present). Colored Pencil.

Lines are drawn to represent architectural elements and components. Underneath or through the images are film titles written in Morse code (The Drawing Center)

Jennifer Bartlett: "Hospital" (2012). Pastel.

Her works are based through a series of photographs that are taken at New York Presbyterian Hospital. Deals primarily with interior spaces (The Drawing Center)

Ken Price: "Slow and Stead Wins the Race" (1962-2010). Work on paper.

Relatively new artist, aiming to represent a multitude of techniques done on paper (The Drawing Center)

Sean Scully: "Change and Horizontals" (1945). Acrylic, Ink, and Graphite.

Geometry that is changed based on the artist's representation of the abstract form (The Drawing Center)

Ignacio Uiarte: "Line of Work" (2010). BIC Pens.

Inspired from a former career in business administration, Uiarte aims to represent this line of work through the use of office BIC pens (The Drawing Center)

Reflection: I chose these artists as some of my least favorite because they are of things that I do not find interesting. Do not get me wrong, some of their techniques (such as Uiarte's work in BIC Pens and Ferrara's work with Morse Code) are actually quite interesting, but the way in which they are pulled off did not really catch my interest. I think drawings that are more psychologically or politically based are what really get me excited about art, and although these pieces have their own charm, they lack some sort of representation or theme that I was going for with this project. Overall, I think that these last five pieces are a sharp contrast to the ones I provide above. The color, content, and styles prove that people find different interests in different drawing techniques. 

Figure Study Online Practices

Class,

This is an excellent source for those who want to continue with figure drawing.

http://artists.pixelovely.com/

Internet Research Project

Ally Goodman-Janow

Drawing 106

Artist Research

Artists I liked: 

Kate Ten Eyck : charcoal

 

Kimia Ferdowsi Kline : Oil on panel  

Alex Brewer : Silkscreen, Graphite and Acrylic on canvas 

Scott Espeseth : Ballpoint Pen 

- Monique Luchetti : Gouache and Watercolor  

Artists I didn’t like / didn’t understand: 

David Staniunas Adam Hinterlang : Pen

 

Daphne Plessner : Watercolor 

Judith Fegerl : Metal / Wire  

Diana Shpungin : Sculptures

  

Jarrod Beck : Iron Oxide, Charcoal, Graphite

The artist I felt the strongest connection/reaction to would have to be Kimia Ferdowsi Kline. Her art stems from the stories her father told her about his garden back in Tehran, Iran. She has not been able to visit or go back home to Iran, so she lives vicariously through her paintings and the gardens that they depict. Not only are the paintings beautiful, but they also represent speech, power and gender construction. 

I chose this artist because her work is extremely colorful, vivid, and really tells a story about the garden she is imagining. The colors are what originally caught my eye, and how detailed every inch of the panel is; there is no white space, but there are vast areas where nothing is happening, keeping the picture balanced with calm and chaotic. The colors are also not just your ordinary reds and greens, but hot pinks and dark blues and royal purples. These colors don’t lay flat on the page, they stand out and make each and every object pop from the background. She also tends to put contrasting colors next to or in front of other colors, and it really makes that object stand out and gives it dimension, even though some of her paintings don’t have a particular focal point. 

Another thing I really like about her work is that it depicts an imaginary garden that she created from stories told to her by her dad. I really enjoy nature, both viewing it and being surrounded by it, and her paintings give off a natural and euphoric sense of being outside in a garden. She paints plants with leaves of all shapes and sizes, trees, bushes, flowers, grass, etc. and makes it seem as though these plants were actually alive and moving. Although the colors are not realistic, they portray the excitement she got from hearing her dad’s stories about the whimsical garden and all the beautiful plants in it. Just looking at her paintings makes me want to see that garden too.

Lastly, I really like how she uses girls and women in her paintings to give a message and make the image more powerful. For example, in the sample painting above, there is a naked girl, probably young teens, sniffing some flowers. Nothing about the girl being nude is provocative or sexual, but instead, peaceful and rather ordinary. It’s as if this girl is in her natural habitat and just doing what she always does. It’s very innocent. In another piece, she has four teenage-looking girls laying in the middle of a walkway with their heads on each other’s stomachs. They are simply relaxing in the garden and enjoying each other’s company. Again, very innocent and undisturbed by the world around them. I know that whenever I lay outside I feel very tranquil and serene, and these women give me the sense that they feel the same way.