example essays for final paper

These are 2 essays from the New York Times which review large group shows. Pay attention to the sections that talk about how the separate artworks work in context with each other.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/26/arts/design/26muni.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/07/arts/design/07bien.html

Kiki Smith

Kiki Smith uses myths, legends, fairy tales, and her Catholic background to create fascinating images. My idea for my project was taking these themes she used and used different color and font size from my paper to create my own image (i.e. white lily to represent Mary with the blue background and a scene from Little Red Riding Hood).

Mary Kelly

Mary Kelly uses text over images as the main way to convey the message behind her work. In the processes to create her final works, Mary uses a detailed documentation process to narrow the content and form of her work. I based my project off of one of Mary's works Sisterhood is POW...; the words that I used were the major concepts I discussed in my paper. I used styrofoam posterboard and carved the words out before backlighting them.

Kris Martin's Untitled (Vase)

Artist Kris Martin uses ready-mades and antique replicas as well as classics (which are poorly reproduced) to show how meaning is lost through interpretation and reproduction. His theory is that the more an object is replicated the less it is like the original object itself. Untitled (vase) is an antique replica of a blue and white Ming vase. Each time Martin shows Untitled (vase) he drops in before installing it in the gallery and then meticulously glues all the identifiable pieces together. Every time he shows this piece the meaning of the replica gets more and more skewed, showing a loss of information over time and reproduction. Through this purposely poor reproduction, he explores destruction of meaning and lost of value of a work. Furthermore, he puts his own work on the line: the more popular this piece gets and the more it is shown in galleries, the more time Martin has to break it (loosing small bits of information each time). 

For my project, I chose to replicate Martin’s idea by writing my thesis of my paper on the exterior of the vase. I then preformed Martin’s process of breaking the vase and gluing it back together. Although you can make out my thesis, some parts are harder to read than others. My paper (my original piece) is clearer than the message on the vase (the copy/replica). 

Rosenthal’s work is intimate and personal, with the purpose of mixing her thoughts of life with the popular ideals of mass culture. Yet, she is not advocating for a point of view, but rather allowing free association for the observer thus exposing the ideals of popular cultural. She commonly produces her works in multiples or varying issues. Rosenthal crashed a PerformaO5 festival, wearing customized image and text shirts 'Button Pin/Name Badge Shirts'. She handed out cards from her 1987 work 'Seven Provocation Cards' to the crowd. They had statements like 'Put It in Writing' and Do You Get the Picture' written on them.

My project stems from her performance piece at the Performa05 festival. I wore a black t-shirt with pinned excerpts from by paper attached to it. I made notecards with words from my paper I felt held a lot of importance to the description of Rosenthal's work. I had multiple color layers and the word printed in various fonts and sizes, to relate to Rosenthal's style of going back to her work and developing it more. In order to handout the notecards similarly to how Rosenthal did at the festival.

Los Carpinteros

I choose to focus my paper on the uniqueness of Los Carpinteros as artists, from their decision to renounce their individual rights as artists, to their way of communication with each other to how and why they create art.

For my project, I chose to create a piece by combining my paper with a wooden dresser, two unrelated objects, in a similar style as Los Carpinteros.

Sol LeWitt: The Father of Conceptual Art

Thesis:  Sol LeWitt's career and work reveal his dedication to emphasize his ideas and concepts within his work over the work's visual aspects themselves in both his minimal approach and his involvement in his final works.

In turning my paper on Sol LeWitt into a piece of artwork, I chose to concentrate mainly on two things:  LeWitt's recurring theme of the parts to whole relationship and LeWitt's pragmatic approach to his pieces through his process and use of the grid.  Primarily I chose nine phrases of varying importance from my paper.  I then assigned grayscale values to those phrases according that importance.  Finally I took those nine phrases printed in their respective grayscale values and arranged them in nine different ways to emphasize the concept of parts to whole relationship within my paper.

Allard van Hoorn

Allard van Hoorn’s photographs serve not as an object, but as a documentation of a moment, a color, or an event that cannot otherwise be communicated. The artist communicates his subjects through the utilization of naming and re contextualizing. In my project I used the naming method van Hoorn used to present the thesis of my paper. The naming card, created in reference of the Pantone Color Charts, show slight variations in the true meaning of the thesis, along with the actual, complete thesis.

John Latham

John Latham became interested in trying to unify both art and science because he thought society has reached an intellectual crisis. He did not like the idea of how society separated science, culture and art. Latham wanted to explore and create work that suggests scientific ideals, philosophy and art to describe the origin of the physical universe. My thesis is:John Latham's theory of explaining the existence of the physical universe is shown by using repetition and different techniques in medium as well as time concepts to convey the ideals of cosmology.

My project is based on his book series. I incorporated my paper by placing the text into the book, so that it looks like a part of the book. I selected a typeface that is used in novels.  I placed page numbers and the title of my paper into the page.  I made the title look like a new chapter. I also used one of his techniques by splattering paint onto the books.

I chose to research the conceptual artist, Mel Bochner. Mel Bochner studied how to use text as the subject of his artwork. He uses language with strong meaning that evokes strong emotions and feelings from the viewer. He also played with the idea of color and how it affects the viewers interpretation of the text displayed in his work. He displays the text in rows in left to right, up to down orientation.  I chose to recreate his piece, "Language is not Transparent," as well as incorporate the techniques from other works. In his piece, the text is printed over and over. It is easy to read in places but gets very hard to read where the texts overlap. I created my piece using Bochner's theory of color and the technique of placing the text in rows. I chose random words in my paper that were loaded with meaning and printed them over and over and over so that they overlapped, causing it to be difficult to read. 

Kiki Smith: Melissa Rood

My thesis takes a look at how Kiki Smith uses the themes of life, death, and resurrection in her printmaking. The idea of my project came from her Blue Feet etching on blue paper. She folds the paper with a French-fold so that it can also be turned into a book. I also did this on a piece of 8'x4' paper and instead of putting poetry on it like she did, I incorporated quotes from my paper.

Amy Adler

Amy Adler combines many art forms to create her own creative process of showing performance based art through fixed media. She combines photography, drawing and the ideas and principles of film to show her point of view. Through the use of these different medias Amy Adler is able to blur the lines which define the past and present as well as the ideas of attainment and loss.

I was able to create a sense of time and distance between the viewer and paper by:

- copied and pasted text over text to create layered effect

- deleted unneeded words and punctuation to alter paper

- printed paper

- photographed paper

- loaded pictures of paper into computer

- put the paper back in word

- altered color of paper

- printed paper

- pasted altered paper to white foam core

Chicago has made it a point to address society as a whole, confronting all of society with existing societal issues in such a way as to convey subtle messages of societal hierarchy, religion and feminist issues in a post modern way. The visuals in her artwork create a type of visual language for the viewer and bring about issues that society tends to push aside. Most people think in a pyramidal, hierarchical structure. She treats her works in a non-hierarchical manner to ensure that no one work from a series is given greater visual weight than the next. In her work, Chicago has strived for the effect of change within society.

Yves Klein

- Blue Sponge Relief








-Blue Monochrome

Yves Klein’s used his art to transmit his beliefs in what he thought of as the immateriality of man and the concept of the void. He thought of immateriality as the sensibility of man that was beyond the physical limits of the world. This could be represented by absolute pure color and in the concept of space. This is connected to the notion of “the void” or a territory of candor and freedom, a sort invisible protective zone. Though the principles of immateriality and the void can be seen in most facets of his work, Klein’s monochrome paintings, his sponge reliefs, and his retrospective work most readily show his preoccupation with spiritual beliefs in his art. Above is my project, which consists of my paper, with I tried to rework to show the concepts which were so important to the work of Klein. The rectangles in the middle are to represent Klein's views of the immateriality and the concept of the void, and the words of the paper that are spiraling around the rectangles are to represent the materiality and chaos of the world around us.

Andy Goldsworthy

Andy Goldsworthy creates environmental works that reflect the natural forces of time and change. Read on...

Timer Model No. 152 by Rodolfo Bonetto

Rodolfo Bonetto's image of a timer relates to Felix Gonzales, Untitled (Perfect Lovers), in that they both involve time. The two have similar subject matter, and Bonetto's work follows after Gonzales'. After Bonetto's image of the timer is Tom Friedman's, Untitled. This shows a photograph of a fly in black and white. Friedman's work was chosen to follow after Bonetto's because they are both black and white photographs.

Le Roi a la Chasse (2006)

My piece was Kehinde Wiley's "Le Roi a la Chasse" (2006). To the left we placed a piece by Gerhard Richter. These shared a similar color scheme. To the right we placed Nan Golden's "Nan and Brian in Bed". These two were connected because they each had a human subject.

Two Fried Eggs and a Kebab

"Two Fried eggs and a Kebab" related on one side to the giant burger because they aesthetically share the same brown colors and also in terms of subject matter both portray food.  On the other side "Two Fried Eggs and a Kebab" relates to the two chairs again because of the brown color but also because they are the same medium, wood, and in terms of function the table and chairs accompany each other.