Creative Arts

Homage

Coursework 1.2, Creative Arts 1.2 Creative Arts Skills, Creative Arts BA (Hons), Project 1: Identify, Locate and Plan

Homage in art refers to the act of paying tribute or showing respect to a particular artist or artwork. This can take many forms, such as replicating a famous piece of art, referencing specific elements or techniques used by another artist, or simply acknowledging the influence of a particular artist on one’s own work.

One way in which homage is often seen in art is through the use of appropriation, in which an artist takes elements from another work and incorporates them into their own. This can be seen in the use of ready-made objects or images and the incorporation of techniques or styles from other artists. For example, many modern artists have appropriated the styles and techniques of the Impressionists or the Surrealists, using their techniques and styles as a starting point for their own work.

Another way in which homage is often seen in art is through the use of tribute or reference. This can be seen in using specific elements or symbols associated with a particular artist or artwork, such as a particular colour palette or a specific composition. For example, many artists have paid tribute to the work of Vincent van Gogh by incorporating elements of his style and techniques into their own work, such as the use of thick, expressive brushstrokes or the use of bright, bold colours.

Overall, homage in art serves as a way for artists to pay tribute to the work of their peers and predecessors and acknowledge their influence on their own work. Whether through appropriation, tribute, or reference, homage is an important way for artists to connect with the art of the past and to pay respect to those who have paved the way for their own artistic endeavours.

Homage originally meant a feudal ceremony in which a man acknowledged himself as a lord’s vassal (Merriam-Webster, 2018). The root is homo from the Latin meaning man, with the vassal being a king’s male subject officially becoming the ‘king’s man’ through this ritual known as a homage. It was a very public declaration of respect, with a bond forged between the king and the vassal.

In the creative world, this idea of respect is still evident and has the public declaration aspect too. The term refers to “a painting, movie, poem or other creative work where the maker adopts the recognisable content or features used by another practitioner, or a particular work, often as a way to demonstrate admiration, sometimes as a critique of a particular issue” (Open College of the Arts, 2022).

Examples of Homage

Some famous examples of homage in painting include:
“The Persistence of Memory” by Salvador Dali: This surrealist painting, which features melting clocks and other strange objects, is often seen as a homage to the work of Marcel Duchamp and the Dada movement. Dali was heavily influenced by Duchamp and the Dadaists, and many of the elements in “The Persistence of Memory” are references to their work.

Salvador Dali paid homage to Marcel Duchamp in several ways throughout his career. One of the most notable ways in which Dali paid homage to Duchamp was through his use of surrealist techniques and motifs, which were heavily influenced by Duchamp’s work and the Dada movement.

Dali was heavily influenced by Duchamp’s use of ready-mades or ordinary objects presented as works of art and often incorporated these elements into his own work. For example, Dali’s painting “The Persistence of Memory” features melting clocks and other strange objects, which are reminiscent of Duchamp’s use of found objects in his artwork.

In addition to his use of ready-mades, Dali also paid homage to Duchamp through his use of Surrealist techniques and motifs, such as the use of unexpected or irrational elements in his artwork. Duchamp was a key figure in the Surrealist movement, and Dali’s work was heavily influenced by this movement and its ideas.

“The Starry Night” by Vincent van Gogh: This famous painting, which depicts a turbulent night sky over a small village, is often seen as a homage to the Impressionists’ work.

“The Starry Night” by Vincent van Gogh is often seen as a homage to the Impressionists’ work, particularly the work of Claude Monet and Pierre-Auguste Renoir. Van Gogh was heavily influenced by the Impressionists and was particularly drawn to their use of bright, bold colours and loose, expressive brushstrokes.

One way in which “The Starry Night” pays homage to Monet and Renoir is through its use of colour. Like the Impressionists, van Gogh uses a vibrant, bold colour palette in this painting, with bright blues and greens used to depict the night sky and the trees. This use of bright, expressive colours is reminiscent of the work of Monet and Renoir, who were known for using bold, vibrant colours in their paintings.

Another way in which “The Starry Night” pays homage to the Impressionists is through its use of brushstrokes. Van Gogh’s brushstrokes are loose and expressive, with thick, textured strokes used to depict the swirling clouds and the rippling surface of the village pond. This use of expressive brushstrokes is similar to the techniques used by the Impressionists, who sought to capture the fleeting, ephemeral nature of light and colour in their paintings.

“The Birth of Venus” by Botticelli: This painting, which depicts the goddess Venus emerging from the sea, is often seen as a homage to the work of the ancient Greek and Roman sculptors. Botticelli was heavily influenced by classical art, and many of the elements in “The Birth of Venus” reflect this influence, including the use of classical poses and the depiction of the goddess as a figure of beauty and grace.

One way in which “The Birth of Venus” pays homage to classical sculpture is through its depiction of the human form. The figure of Venus in this painting is depicted in a classical pose, with her arms extended out to the sides and her body turned slightly to the left. This pose is reminiscent of the poses used by ancient Greek and Roman sculptors, who often depicted their subjects in graceful, elegant poses.

Another way in which “The Birth of Venus” pays homage to classical sculpture is through its use of ornamentation and decorative elements. The painting features a number of classical motifs, such as the shells and seaweed that surround Venus, as well as the use of classical architectural elements in the background. These elements are reminiscent of classical sculpture’s ornate, decorative style.

Assignment 4: Traces of Time

Assignment 4 - Traces of Time, Assignments, Creative Arts 1.1 Experience Creative Arts, Creative Arts BA (Hons)

This project has allowed me to be more creative in my responses to the ideas of Time. There have been a few ideas that I have tried to develop as I have progressed through the learning exercises.

1. A Series of Work “What is Time?”

5-mins
10-mins
20-mins
Work – 2022

My everyday job involves spending all day at the computer. I work digitally and remotely for a company and so spend up to 10 hours a day sometimes moving my mouse and clicking on various parts of the screen to “work”. At the end of 10 hours at the computer, I get up and leave the desk with nothing physical to show for the mental effort. The only physical effort is maintaining my posture and moving my hands, both to type on the keyboard and my right hand to move the mouse. The mouse moves no more than a few cm to move a cursor on a screen no more than 0.5 metres in any direction. At the end of the day, I have created many bytes of data but what can I show? In the past, people would have more physical tactile jobs where after 10 hours they would have a physical product, their muscles would ache, they would have a wall, a ditch, a selection of crops, a garment they had made. The work was physically tough but they had something concrete to hold in their hands. I do not. I wanted to create something to show what I spend my time doing. My picture is the result. Something I can be proud of.

My Process

Using recording software, I screen recorded a standard work task. The software was set up so that it recorded the whole screen, highlighted the mouse movement and would flash red every time the mouse was clicked.

I then watched the recording back in slow motion, so that even a 20-minute task took over 2 hours to watch back. As I watched I copied the movement of the mouse on the screen with a white gel pen on black paper. Each time the screen flashed red to indicate a mouse click, I paused to glue a red star in the spot of the click.

I stopped to photograph the work after 5-minutes, 10-minutes and 20-minutes of real-time recording.

2. Reflection on “What is Time?”

The idea developed from a combination of Jane Grisewood’s line drawings where she walks and draws and the line drawing responses to exercise 2: marking time. Jane Grisewood’s drawings are about the performance and what they represent rather than any technical traditional drawing style which is something I tried to incorporate here. My “drawing” isn’t classically skilled, it is a simple white continuous line, like Jane Grisewood, the addition of very childlike glued on stars adds to this in my work. I am not aiming for something that looks skilled, I am aiming for something that speaks more about what it represents than something technically accomplished or stunning to look at. Time was also a big factor in Grisewood’s work that I was trying to emulate. Her works take hours to create with the mental determination and focus to complete them being a big aspect. I wanted to create something on this scale, and this work is unfinished. I would like to extend it and create a full 10 hours of screen time into this style which will take me somewhere close to 100 hours to complete.

It is odd as when I read back my reflection on Grisewood’s work, I recall that when I first saw it I wasn’t particularly moved or made to think much. But it clearly left a bigger impression on me than I realised at the time.

The inspiration for the source of the movement in relation to time came during the activities in exercise two. I chose to base those activities at my desk as it’s where I spend the most time. I commented at the time “I have chosen to base this work at my desk as it is a place where I spend most of my day and I am not always happy about spending so much time here. I wonder if the emotion of feeling trapped here will come through in what I produce.” I think that has come across in the way the drawing does create a mesh, a trap for the stars. Stars of ideas but trapped in the monotonous white lines.

The poem I wrote at the start shows the initial idea:

My Desk

Tucked away in the corner of a room
Facing a barren wall
No window to dream out of
Prisoners have more pleasure
Yet my desk remains
The source of my income and freedom
Entrapment leading to enrichment
A necessary evil?
Constant pings as people keep me here
Tasks pile up, yet the space remains clear
No papers anymore to show what I have achieved
Digital is the only mark I make.

"Digital is the only mark I make.". I want to create more.

Whilst completing the one-line drawings in that exercise, the one that stood out was the white pen on black paper:

However, I wanted to develop the idea of drawing one continuous line into something else. I did try to create something digitally and here the red circles were the mouse clicks:

However, I wanted to move completely away from making something digitally as that is part of the message.

I am still drawn to digital as a discipline. There was obviously digital components to this. I had to digitally record and manipulate the video in order to be able to draw from it. The end result is very physical. There is a sense of depth and going back in time as the stars that end up being hidden by newer white lines go back in the piece and you get a sense they were created first. It is giving time direction and the aspect of we can’t go back to those moments that were gone as they are now hidden in the mesh of time that has since happened.

As mentioned previously, I want to develop this even more. Do a longer recording and on a bigger scale. Experiment with different techniques of creating the lines. To make something 3D involving wool or thread as the lines would be interesting. To make a giant board to represent the screen and then hammer in a nail or pin to wrap the string around each time there is a mouse click. To get a real trap, a mesh that extends forwards would be intriguing. In exercise 2, I also played with sounds a little to try and something to develop to accompany it. Just having the mouse clicks as sounds could perhaps add to the atmosphere, it would be reminiscent of Geiger Mueller counters when they click every time a radioactive substance decays. Like time decaying and we can’t stop it.

Reflection on Progress

I feel that I have progressed a lot during this project, particularly in terms of being more creative and selective about where I spend my time. The initial piece on Tacita Dean was very research-focused but since then I feel my responses are more creative. I have started to try and include more of my random experiments with different materials linked and not linked to the course directly. For example painting with wool and life drawing. Life drawing isn’t something I have ever really done before but I enjoy going to draw from observation and it is teaching me a lot about drawing quickly and in real life. I feel it will help my general painting too and ideas of the human body in terms of scale and proportion. I’ve also tried to start writing up some of my random research and ideas from the history of art I end up looking at. One day maybe there will be more structure and pattern to these!

I very much enjoyed the different creative activities and I am starting to develop them into more of a narrative to explore the idea of time. I do seem to have moved away from my idea of how the perception of messages over time evolve during this project, but I still wish to return to that.

References

Grisewood, J. (n.d.). Jane Grisewood Artist. [online] janegrisewood.com. Available at: http://janegrisewood.com/. [Accessed 21 Feb, 2022]

How Music Hijacks Our Perception of Time

Coursework, Creative Arts 1.1 Experience Creative Arts, Creative Arts BA (Hons), Project 4: Developing Methods - Traces of Time

For the research task, I decided to look at Jonathan Berger’s article How Music Hijacks Our Perception of Time (Berger, 2014). The reason behind this choice was two-fold. One, I feel my knowledge of music is probably the weakest of all the creative arts and so I was interested to challenge myself to look at an area that I would usually avoid, secondly because Christian Marclay was featured in the introductory lecture and I wasn’t particularly drawn to their work then.

Jonathan Berger is an American composer and researcher. Berger’s research explores how and why humans persistently, even obsessively engage with music (Berger, 2015). His article starts with recalling how he was listening to Schubert’s String Quintet in C Major and how during the second movement he had an unnerving feeling that time was literally grinding to a halt.

I managed to find a recording on Youtube and decided to listen:

I completely agree with Berger, I couldn’t even finish listening to the recording as it induced an almost panic-like sense in me. The piece is one of the most unnerving I have listened to, it is powerful and visceral and I felt completely overwhelmed. You get a real sense of time slowing down and feel like it is about to stop in the next beat. A very uncomfortable listen but very thought-provoking.

Listening to this gave me the idea of marking marks whilst listening to different pieces of music, to see if the playing with time came through in my mark-making.

To draw I put in earphones, closed my eyes and just drew as I listened to the music. You can see definite differences in the types of marks in the different pieces of music:

Schubert
Vivladi – Spring
Encanto – We don’t talk about Bruno
MGMT – Time To Pretend
Muse – Uprising
Ave Maria

References

Berger, J. (2014). How Music Hijacks Our Perception of Time. [online] Nautilus | Science Connected. Available at: https://nautil.us/how-music-hijacks-our-perception-of-time-1558/ [Accessed 1 Mar. 2022].

Berger, J. (2015). Jonathan Berger. [online] jonathanberger.net. Available at: http://jonathanberger.net/ [Accessed 1 Mar. 2022].

Jane Grisewood

Coursework, Creative Arts 1.1 Experience Creative Arts, Creative Arts BA (Hons), Project 4: Developing Methods - Traces of Time

Jane Grisewood’s drawings seem more about the performance of drawing than technical ability. The drawings are simple lines but with the characteristic of them being long and laborious.

Images from http://www.janegrisewood.com/Drawings/project3detail12.html

Many of Jane Grisewood’s works are monochrome, just simple lines of black or white. They are drawings that anyone could reproduce if they had enough time. Time is a big factor in the work. Some of the drawings take over 100 hours to complete with the line going back and forth. There must have been a real mental determination and focus to produce them.

They remind me of ma(r)king time from Project 1. Where again the focus was on almost meditative flow work rather than anything detailed or skilled in nature.

Although I can admire the mental strength and determination to produce these. I am not particularly moved or made to think by them, other than “wow, that was a lot of time”. For many reasons, I found Ma(r)king Time much more interesting and powerful.

Tacita Dean

Coursework, Creative Arts BA (Hons), Project 4: Developing Methods - Traces of Time, Research & Reflection

Tacita Dean

Nationality: English
Born: 1965
Major Works: Disappearance at Sea (1996). Mosquito (1997), Trying to Find the Spiral Jetty (1998), Sound Mirrors (1999), The Green Ray (2001), Kodak (2006), FILM (2011)
Years Active: 1992-present
Medium: 16-mm film, drawing
Style: Films that resemble drawings, no narration or score, no fancy lighting “I like things to happen within the frame”.

Reflections

Padlet link to research.

Tacita Dean is someone I have been aware of, mainly due to the film The Green Ray which I looked into back in Project One and also from her book Place (Dean and Millar, 2005) but before this project, I would definitely rate my knowledge as sparse.

Expansive is a word that springs to mind when I began to research her work. This one entry can never do justice to the scope and breadth of her work, so I am going to focus on what I see as some common themes that run through her work and particular pieces that caught my eye. I also want to focus on any inspiration I can take for my own creative journey.

Common Themes

As detailed on the padlet research board, I have looked at a variety of Dean’s work, although I feel I still have only scraped the surface. There seem to be some common themes that run through them which I would like to reflect on.

One thing that is clear from pieces like Mosquito (Magnetic) (Dean, 1997), Kodak (Dean, 2006) is a determination to keep older means of producing art and video alive such as 16 mm film. There is a nostalgia for the past and the way we used to create and a focus on keeping these industries alive. Dean herself says:

“There’s something in the emotional language, the emulsion, and the movement and the breathing that makes film a very alive medium, whereas digital projection is inert.”

Tacita Dean

Dean writes in an article for The Guardian (Dean, 2011) about her wish for celluloid film to maintain its presence in art and video and her sadness at the last 16mm lab in England closing. She talks of her process of creating films using 16 mm as being “intrinsically bound up in the solitary hours of watching, spooling and splicing” and how there is a “magical transformation” with analogue techniques that digital can’t replicate.

This has made me stop and think about the importance of the method used to create as being equal in stature to the end result. Modernity seems to continually look for shortcuts, we now have apps such as canva that turn everyone into a graphic artist with ready-made templates and images to snap in place. Is this art? Or in taking all these shortcuts are we losing true creativity and is everything becoming a cookie-cutter replica of each other. There is something about a hands-on, slow and arduous process that reflects in the final piece. Would Dean’s work like The Green Ray (Dean, 2001) have the same impression if it was filmed and edited digitally?

I think people are starting to appreciate times gone by and the processes we used to have. Recently there are movements such as “Slow Food” which has a focus on slow, traditional methods over mass production. There is a sense of loss when old industries die out and artists like Dean are highlighting this with the use of materials such as 16 mm film.

It brings me to think again of Katie Paterson’s Future Library and how the world will look in one hundred years. By reflecting on the past, we jump to thoughts about the future. That is what thinking about Time does, it seems difficult to only think in one direction.

Another common theme I see is this technique that has been described as “drawing with film”. This in some ways seems to contradict the idea of keeping to the old ways. In bringing film into the idea of drawing, are we losing traditional drawing techniques? This idea is explored to some extent in Ed Krcma’ Tate paper (Krcma, 2010) who suggests that drawing is more aligned with analogue technologies like film. Interestingly in this paper a comparison to William Kentridge’s work is made which is a link I han’ tmade previously but I think it is a very valid one as both do use film and drawing together to create something very new.

Highlights

One piece by Dean I was immediately drawn to was Trying to Find the Spiral Jetty (Dean, 1998). The Spiral Jetty is still something I keep coming back to for inspiration and so my interested was certainly stimulated when I found out that Dean shares a similar fascination. Trying to Find the Spiral Jetty is a sound piece that Dean recorded when travelling to the United States to visit the Jetty. She didn’t find the Jetty but recorded her experience, analoguely of course.

Trying to Find the Spiral Jetty, Tacita Dean

Building on this sound recording, Tacita Dean made contact with JG Ballard who was also a great admirer of Smithson and they exchanged a series of letters over a period of time. This lead to the making of the film JG (Dean, 2014) hich features images of the salt lakes intertwined with Smithson’s Jetty and Ballards short stories. Tacita Dean said of the project:

“Both works have an analog heart, not just because they were made or written when spooling and reeling were the means to record and transmit images and sound, but because their spiraling is analogous to time itself.”

Tactita Dean

In order to mix the landscape and time in the same frame, Tacita Dean used a technique that “used various purpose made masks of different shapes to mask the gate aperture rendering an effect of stenciling, layering the filmed images” (Galerie Marie Goodman, 2014).

I think of Dean using Smithson and Ballard’s work as a basis in a similar way to the Ekphrastic poems. Creating something using a very different discipline based on an earlier piece of work. This has given me a lot of ideas and inspiration about how I may keep Smithson’s work at the basis of something I could create.

Inspiration and Ideas

When I first cames across Tacita Dean in the introductory lecture with her Green Ray film, it wasn’t one of the works I was initially drawn to and I didn’t look too much into it at the time. However, now having spent some more time exploring her work it has given me a lot of ideas and inspiration for how I could develop my own work.

One approach I want to experiment with in the next few days is using film as a drawing technique. I sadly don’t currently have access to analogue filming equipment to fully appreciate this style but am hoping I can create something digitally.

In the future, I want to experiment with analogue photography and filming. I remember the anticipation as a child taking photos where you had to wait and see what returned from the developers and you didn’t have the chance to take 100s of versions of the same shot to get a good digital photo. I will see if I can get hold of a camera to allow to do this.

Looking at Tacita Dean’s work has also renewed my interest in the Spiral Jetty and land art. Perhaps there is a way I can combine “cinematic drawing” with taking photos of spirals in the local environment.

References

Grayson Perry – Playing to the Gallery

Book Summary, Books, Books & reading, Creative Arts BA (Hons), Other Projects, Research & Reflection

I picked up Grayson Perry’s Playing to the Gallery (Perry, 2014) recently from my local library and feel it is an excellent example of many of the points covered in Gilda Williams’ book How to Write About Contemporary Art.

Grayson Perry writes in an extremely engaging way about the roles of galleries and contemporary art and the book is also filled with some of his cartoon drawings which bring the content alive. It is a fairly short book of 134 pages but there are snippets of things to reflect on.

  • You can’t expect to understand conteporary art without effort. This reinforces the point in How to Write About Contemporay Art (Williams, 2014) that it is a practise that should ideally be daily. The deeper you get involved, the more enjoyment there is.
  • What we “like” is thought to be subjective but there is a lot of manipulation by critics, dealers and gallery owners. The art we get to ee is determined from above and curated for us. It pays to have an open mind and start to reflect on what we actually like rather than what we think we should like.
  • The philosophy of what art actually is fascinates me and this book dicusses a lot. Perry discuses what he calls his “boundaries” of what art is. This is an idea I want to come back to in relation to time.
  • Being an artist should not be about “being an artist”, all great artists do it because they want to make art. There is a balance between making what is going to please people and potentially make you an income but this childlike joy of just making art should never be lost.

References

Assignment 1 Feedback

Assignment 1 - The Shape of Time, Assignments, Creative Arts 1.1 Experience Creative Arts, Creative Arts BA (Hons)

I received my assignment 1 feedback last week, and there are a couple of points I would like to reflect upon.

Positives

  • My learning log/blog is well organised and engaging.
  • I am showing good visual and contextual knowledge and understanding.
  • My learning is progressing through self-directed learning and further studies.
  • I have shown care and attention when experimenting with the hole punching.
  • My sketchbook presentation is neat.
  • My assignment is an effective narrative of my journey.
  • I have set my own action points to take ownership of my own learning.
  • My reflection on the Spiral Jetty and Spirals was particularly strong.

Points to Improve/Consider

  • Explore different ways of presenting ideas e.g. through lens based media.
  • When lifting action points for future work, take time to think about the steps to achieve those points.
  • Use the ideas in How to Write About Contemporary Art to develop different ways to write about work.
  • Develop use of Harvard academic referencing and academic structure to work using more quotes and comparative discussions.
  • Include images of past work and ideas for future work within blog.
  • Experiment with new ideas and materials.
  • Discuss ideas with peers and take part in group work.

Ideas for future work

My tutor has suggested using the hole punching as a prop for photographic or video work in different locations, connecting the word time to specific situations, and allowing you to capture the light through the perforations in the paper, by displaying it on a window, or taking it outside and documenting at different times of day to emphasise the context of the work.

Another idea is to photograph found spirals within my local environment, or create my own, or combine the hole punching technique within this context.

Reflection

Overall I am very pleased with the comments received. I know there is no formal mark to this part of the course, but it is still nice to receive a positive critique. I have spent a lot of time getting my blog set up to be easy to navigate, I chose not to use the standard OCA template which has meant a little extra work on my part but I feel it was worth it.

Academic referencing is something I have done in the past, I think I am just out of the habit of doing so and so will endeavour to include these in my next submissions.

I am feeling more confident that I know how to progress in the next assignment now. I am just feeling with the time of year, that study time is going to be the biggest challenge, but I will try to stay disciplined and stick to my doing something every day.

Amélie (2001)

Coursework, Creative Arts 1.1 Experience Creative Arts, Creative Arts BA (Hons), Films, Project 2: Encountering Time - A Critical Analysis, Research & Reflection

Amélie is a 2001 French romantic comedy by Jean-Pierre Jeunet. There is so much you can say about this movie but I want to focus here on its use of colour throughout the film as I think it is one of the most brilliant examples.

The film follows the story of Amélie who is brought up in an eccentric household and eccentric characters seem to be ever-present in her life. We are brought into her imagination and the way she sees the world throughout the film.

The use of colour in the film helps us feel this imagination and inner world. The film as a whole is very saturated with warm filters, there is a lot of deep red, gold, yellows and earthy greens which help create this almost surreal feel. Paris itself is brought to life and personified using the yellow hues and it acts as a character in the film rather than a location.

Green and red are used commonly in the film. Green symbolises nature, hope and is a comforting colour to many people and so it is used to harmonise the overall look in the film. Red on the other hand brings warmth, passion and Amélie is often seen wearing red or carrying red accessories to reflect her life and mood.

The Story of the Last Chrysanthemums – Kenji Mizoguchi

Coursework, Creative Arts 1.1 Experience Creative Arts, Creative Arts BA (Hons), Films, Project 2: Encountering Time - A Critical Analysis, Research & Reflection

The Story of the Last Chrysanthemums is a 1939 Japanese film directed by Kenji Mizoguchi, about a male actor specialising in playing female roles in late 19th century Japan. It was a movie I discovered by accident one day but has become one of my favourites. It manages to capture humanity and the ideas of family, class, the value of life in a simple storyline with amazing cinematography.

The shots Mizoguchi uses to draw us into the story are on a very human level. There are a lot of wide-angle shots that place the actors in very real sets as if we are watching real life from a distance. There is a lot of care taken to create realistic mise-en-scene to convince us we are watching a real story. The detail in the shots is amazing, and as so much of it is shot from a distance the set is almost more important than the acting at times, but this is how we often see the real world, we watch stories unfold from a distance.

There are very few close-ups or changes of angles within a scene and this helps us stay captivated by what we are seeing unfold. Almost like watching actors on a stage rather than a film.

Alongside the amazing cinema work, the storyline and script are believable and give us an insight into the class system in Imperial Japan. The characters develop and we feel their emotions and struggles with them.

Toby Ziegler – The Hedonistic Imperative

Coursework, Creative Arts 1.1 Experience Creative Arts, Creative Arts BA (Hons), Project 2: Encountering Time - A Critical Analysis

Ziegler works within the tradition of landscape painting but his virtual reality terrains bear the hallmarks of the digital age. His scenes are designed on computer then transferred to the canvas as schematic drawings. These compositions become increasingly complex, offering the viewer a multitude of vanishing points. Here an ordered geometric system is disrupted by the unchecked dripping of areas of paint. The effects of light are also of particular interest to Ziegler. His use of reflective gold leaf in this work further complicates the painting’s surface and distorts the viewer’s spatial perception.

Gallery Label from https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/ziegler-the-hedonistic-imperative-2nd-version-t12308
The Hedonistic Imperative (2nd version) 2006 Toby Ziegler born 1972 Presented by David Gorton 2006 http://www.tate.org.uk/art/work/T12308

When looking for examples of artwork to look at formal elements in, I was drawn to this piece by Toby Ziegler on the Tate site. Unfortunately, I haven’t seen it in person, so am just going to analyse the image which is never quite the same.

Colour

Ziegler’s use of colour evokes images of landscapes, they are earthy secondary tones on the whole and it reminds me of looking down at the ground from a plane. The greens remind me of trees and the patchwork of fields. The orange in there is slightly less natural but still harmonious and still fits in the natural palette, perhaps just more autumnal. It is generally a very warm colour range which makes the whole image seem inviting and comforting. The range of values from deep dark greens to the white-creamy colour gives an interesting contrast and helps draw your eye around the image always finding something interesting to focus on. This also gives the image dimension as there are more muted background colours in the background with more popping vibrant colours in the foreground.

Form

The shapes in this image are the most interesting aspect to me and are what I think makes the image really work. There is a fascinating conflict between organic and geometric shapes. The colour makes me think of a natural landscape and some of the shapes also reflect this as they are natural and organic in nature. Like the patches of muted greens in the background. Then there are very geometric circles that cannot be natural but indicate this idea of something natural being transformed by man.

Line

In the piece are some very energetic lines that move our eyes around the piece as if we were examining a landscape. The orange lines are smooth and flowing, almost river like in nature and they give an interesting focal point in contrast to the circular shapes and areas. The lines give a lot of movement and dynamics to the artwork and it is as if we are looking at a piece captured in the middle of a movement.