16/09/2017

  It was last weekend, I went to V&A ,learned and saw some gorgeous works. V&A is my favourite Art Gallery, however I get lost every times. It is a huge gallery that full of different areas of art creatures, I can always get inspired by the works over there and found out new ways doing and making arts. The collections are spread over seven levels and organised by five major themes: Asia, Europe, Materials & Techniques, Modern and Exhibitions. This weekend I went to the materials section: Ceramic and Glass (my favourite materials in the world ever! ) and luckily there was an exhibition of Balenciaga.

  Let's start at Glass, shall we? 

Erwin Eisch , Narcissus 1975e

Erich was one of the first European artists to use glass for pieces that were purely work of art. In several works he explored the figure of Narcissus, which fell in love with his own reflection and drowned in a pool. This piece was first shown at the new glass museum in Frauenau, Germany, inside a mirrored glass box to represent the pool.

Architectural model, ' Transparent Void of a Tree'

The arcgitect Sou Fujimoto is known for his permeable structures and delicate, light- filled spaces. These reflect his commitment to creating building and installations that straddle the space between natural and the man-made. This model was for an immersive environment he built for an exhibition at the V&A.

Free Essence-6

Japan has been a major centre for studio glass since the 1970s. Ikuta Niyoko is one of its most successful exponents. Her hallmark method of making involves the use of thin sheets of plate glass and ultraviolet-reactive adhesive. She builds up fluidly rhythmic forms in which each sheet of glass is shifted by a few degrees relative to the one before.

Blowing in the Wind 1988

Kumai Kyoko is a leading figure in the world of fibre art. Both a practitioner and a teacher, she is part of a generation of makers whose activities have made Japan an internationally recognised centre for this area of practice, Her output ranges from intimate studies like this to expansive wall hanging and large-scale installations.

Ironwork acqured

It was mostly formed between 1860 and 1930. when the Museum bought ironwork form international exhibitions and private collections. The Museum also saved decorative ironwork form demolished building for preservation, and to inspire artists, designers, makers and other visitors.

Joseph Harrigton, Ravine, 2015

Racine is inspired by the landscape of Mount St Helens, an active volcano in America's Pacific Northwest. The sculpture references the volcano's physical features and its regenerated since the eruption in 1980. Harrington sculpts in ice, using slat to erode its surface. Moulds are taken form the resulting blocks. The finished works are cast form these.

Karumi Nakashima, Struggling Form, 2011

Harumi is known for the remarkable hand-building skills with which he ceates large organic form strikingly covered in brightly coloured polka dots, He is also a teacher, whi has had a great influence on a younger generation of Japanese makers.

Kim Simonsson, Girl Baptised in Gold, 2008

Kim Simonsson draws heavily on the imagery of Japanese manage cartoons, His arresting large-scale single- colour figures appear both familiar and other- worldly. Often addressing issues of authority and power, he frequently depicts children and animals in fantasy roles that challenge conventional expectation.

                     Jonathan Baldock, The Masquerade, 2015

Paul Klee, and compared his artwork with other artworks around the similar period that were influenced by these ideas. Paul Klee’s artwork looks like a child painting, so there is a lot of fun in discovery process, I guessed what the artist what to express in his artworks and then find out the way to prove my thought. I can learn and experience. When I followed artist’s ideas to think about the meaning of the painting, I will learn new things and combined my own thoughts, thereby get more inspiration and motivation.

    Paul Klee, Mask of fear, Oil on burlap                               

   Mask of fear was created by a German-Swiss artist Paul Klee (1879-1940), and it was painted on burlap. Klee’s highly individual style was influenced by movements in art that included expressionism, cubism, and surrealism he is also a student of orientalism, therefore from each of his artworks we feel different and confused. Also, his use of design, pattern, colour, and miniature sign systems all speak to his efforts to employ art as a widow onto that philosophical principle.

   When I first saw this artwork, which depicts a large face it attracted me, it has a visage of stunned eyes and a quizzical smirk or handlebar moustache, which is quite satirical. At the bottom of this painting, there appears four legs which looks like someone is hiding behind the face. Then I realise that it is a big mask held up by two people. Which is different from Klee’s other paintings in this artwork, this only has some simple lines which make the painting more cleaner.

   Looking carefully, I can only see four legs, but not their hands which help them to hold the mask. Therefore in my opinion the reason why two people want to hide themselves, is maybe because they don’t want to be discovered from the outside. According to the artworks’ title, it seems there are some things they don’t want to face which they are scared about, so they try to cover themselves. But they still show their legs, because they want to tell people that they are still moving on, that’s why at the top of the mask there is an arrow facing directly upward.

     For the formal aspects there are only obvious lines, this painting is childlike so that the connection of each line are kept simple, most of them are individual patterns. As the biggest pattern in this painting is the mask it must take many of Klee’s thinking and meaning. On this mask the two eyes are spiritless, which look like two white circles. I feel like it has been controlled by the people who are hiding behind it, because we can’t see any emotions in its eyes. From the outside, I cannot have an insight into the people hiding behind. The colour used in Klee’s painting is interesting: Klee used dark green to paint its background. Those four legs are black witch can be concealed by the darker background. Only the mask has a lighter colour, so that people will be attracted by the mask and ignore those four legs.

               Pablo Picasso, Bust of man, Oil on canvas

   After further research I found that Klee’s paintings are at times fantastic, childlike, or otherwise witty. But I still need to investigate further how Klee’s ideas come out and the formation of his individual. During Klee’s early life he worked at school where he greatly admired the art of children, who seemed to create freely of models without the use of as in previous examples. In his own work he often strove to achieve a similar untutored simplicity, often by employing intense colours inspired by an early trip to North Africa, and by line drawing in the unstudied manner of an everyday craftsman. His pictures were nonetheless rooted in acute observations of the natural world, human behaviour and an appreciation of the small, unremarked incidents of everyday like. He naturally saw analogies between music and visual art, such as in the transient nature of musical performance and the time-based processes of painting, or in the expressive power of colour as being akin to that of musical sonority.

   While researching Paul Klee, I also found that during the early 1900s, the aesthetics of traditional African sculpture became a powerful influence among European artists who formed an avant-garde in the development of modern art. The resulting pictorial flatness vivid colour palette, and fragmented cubist shapes helped to define early modernism which is generally used to describe the succession of art movements that critics and historians have identified since the realism of Gustav Courbet, and culminating in abstract art and its developments of the 1960s.                                       

   The artwork above ‘Bust of a Man’ was painted by Pablo Picasso, oil on canvas. In this painting there is a large face of a man. According to its colour I can feel the culture of African art, normally the colour is dark, red and yellow, which are all warm colours.

   In this painting, every part of his face is complicated, and when Picasso was painting he added the shadow on the face, therefore it makes the face look really three dimensional. Inside both eyes and mouth there are dark colours, so I can’t see what his eyes look like. This is very much like the previous artworks made by Paul Klee. Both of those two artists seem to hide something inside, maybe their heart or their thought process. In Picasso’s painting the man opens his mouth strangely, it looks as if he is talking but from the motion of his mouth, I think he tries to speak quietly. Looking at the whole picture the lines on his face are not just straight lines, they became more complicated and lifelike.

    Having closely studied this piece, I found that African Art is not just everyday visual art; it increases the effect when people look at the paintings. It is an experience from abstract to still life, because of the African famous sculptures, two dimensions changed to three dimensions even if they can only find it visually. However  Picasso isn’t African, he is Spanish but was influenced by objects made African sculptures and people. During the early 1900s, the aesthetics of traditional African sculpture became a powerful influence among European artists who formed an avant-garde in the development of modern art. In France Pablo Picasso blended the highly-stylized treatment of the human figure in African sculptures with painting styles derived from post-impressionist works. 

The Masquerade

     In my second chapter I shall discuss Jonathan Baldock, who is an artist who uses installation to create his ideas. Some of his artworks are humorous however some of them dark and frightening.

                          Jonathan Baldock, PA UBU, 2015 

   ‘Pa Ubu’ is created by the British artist Jonathan Baldock, and graduated from the Royal College of Art. Baldock has used hessian, raw cotton, acrylic paint, dolls eyes, human hair, wood, ceramic, and various textile to create those sculptures. In the gallery because of the hybrid forms, it occupied a lot of space, but it also looks curiously irregular and meticulously crafted.

   In the middle of the room there is a wooden frame. A large face fills the frame, but it is not a human face it looks like a cartoon with thick eyebrows and a droopy moustache. The shape of the face is a square, and has a round opened mouth. As I have shown above, this artwork is a three-dimensional sculpture, and has a lot of layers. Therefore, from different dimensions, I can see a slightly different image of this sculpture, especially the eyes as they are moving when the viewer is moving, and it looks like he is staring at them. The brightest colour in this artwork is the tongue, which is at the front of the opened mouth. From the side view, this tongue stands by itself and is curved, it seems that it wants to go somewhere itself. Looking carefully at its big eyes with the mouth agape, it looks shocked. It seems that it suddenly realises it is in a big cage and it might lose its body because I can see its arms are on the wall.

 Jonathan Baldock, The soft machine, 201