Showing posts with label Art. Show all posts

What's wrong?

The definition of a Liminal Space is not a concrete one, but it builds off of the literal origin of the word liminal: the quality of ambiguity or disorientation that occurs in the middle stage of a rite of passage. When we apply the idea of a middle stage to a location, we get places like hallways, airports, and schools, in-between places that we pass through as we travel from place to place. The same concept can also be applied to the self and our experiences of passing through time, such as adolescence, where we’re uncomfortably between childhood and adulthood. We can assign other specific examples of these places such as homes, stores, malls, playgrounds, rural roads, gas stations, hospitals, and other places destinations where we spend small amounts of time. These places are not scary or eerie. They’re normally bustling with customers and employees, other children, people living their day-to-day lives, and it is this day-to-day context which makes them comforting.

Cho Giseok wants to grow up to be an Art Director

The Nostalgia dreams of a great artist

By William Choi

“When I was young, I wanted to be an art director.” It’s a funny statement and even funnier when you think that it comes from South Korean avant-garde photographer, Cho Giseok. I mean what kid dreams of becoming an art director? Born in 1992, he studied Graphic design at Kookmin University; however, he found the practice unsatisfying and, dropped out at the age of 20 to try to become an art director. As he learned more about the field, he started to build skills in many different fields such as set design and photography. “I wanted to create my own images, and I wanted to work through all the processes.”

HE SAW IT ALL

the visionary Hideo Kojima

By Riley Kuang

A visionary with glasses

Hideo Kojima once predicted that there would be a huge information system connecting the world in the future, through which people would be connected to each other, but that in the end people with ulterior motives would use it to control access to information. People scoffed at this, until today. Kojima once made a prediction that in the future, wars would become a business, and the system built by wars would only maintain the existence of that system. People scoffed at this, until today. Kojima once predicted a not-too-distant future in which people would huddle in separate worlds and rely solely on couriers to keep them connected. People scoffed at this, until today.

IS HE THE GOD OF MANGA?

yes, Urasawa Naoki is

By Marshall Hu

Two pictures of God

Many fans and critics consider Osamu Tezuka one of the great figures in the history of manga. Without a doubt, Astro Boy and Black Jack have had a profound impact on manga aesthetics and culture. In order to commemorate Tezuka's outstanding contributions and to encourage subsequent comic talents to take up the mantle of Tezuka’s brilliant innovations and work, the Japanese newspaper Asahi Shimbun created the Tezuka Osamu Cultural Prize in 1997 to recognize new and inspiring achievements in the field. The joking title for the winner is the “God of Manga.”

MAGNUM OPUSES COLLIDE

Lawrence Argeant's Venus is more San Francisco than we could ever imagine

By Katherine Cooke

It makes you think...of many things

Part I:

Venus

This morning San Francisco woke again to begin its daily grind, unaffected by its current state of despair. Another day, another dollar; another man dead with a needle in his arm and no one is left to cry. The departed man’s face is frozen, his body motionless, strewn aside, cascading down the cold marble stairs that descend from ‘C’era Una Volta’ piazza, nestled within Trinity Place in San Francisco’s ‘Mid-Market’ sector. The man’s face hangs, stuck in a state of shock. Pallid and blue in complexion, any life left in his face is now long since flush. His mouth gapes open, once gasping for air; but in this moment, no breath fills his lungs, and none comes out. Only a crispfall zephyr sweeps across his sallow face, a reminder of how callous our city has become.

THE ART OF THE MONOGRAPH

Three beautiful pieces

By Jaden Fuhrer

Stunning Juxtopositions

In the world of photography, everybody has a story to tell, whether it is through photojournalism, fine art, or everything in between. One can find series online that people have carefully curated showcasing an artist’s body of work. But where else would one be able to tell their story or speak their truth? Photographic monographs tell stories and portray feelings in carefully curated editions. Any consumer of art should look to monographs for three reasons: curated inspiration, ease of access, and a storytelling experience unlimited by traditional cultural distinctions.

SHIN YUN-BOK COULDN'T HELP HIMSELF BECAUSE HE SAW THE WORLD

And depicted it with bold strokes

By Jiwon Kim

Women on the move

Delicate lines, bold and colorful colors are the most prominent features of the paintings by artist Shin Yun-bok (1758-1813) from the late Joseon Dynasty. Shin painted people in everyday life, and he was especially interested in the social lives of aristocrats. His style was subtle and realistic and is still praised by many people to the present day. However, Shin’s paintings were not welcomed during his time, most likely because of the frankness of his depictions of the sexual lives of everyday people: a married gentleman meeting a prostitute; a man meeting his lover under cover of the night; and a monk secretly looking at naked women taking a bath. The question is why does Shin chose to paint scenes that he knew would make government censors upset: the answer is a complex relationship between his artistic upbringing and in his own artistic inclinations.

MORE SCIENCE THAN ART OR MORE ART THAN SCIENCE

or they're really the same

by Julie Chuang

I'm an Artist! I'm an Artist!

Art is the science of what does not yet quite exist, and science is the art of understanding what does exist, or, as we might phrase it, an examination of the material world. Although many people think science and art are at odds, they are not contradictory and in fact are trying to do the same thing. Sometimes science proceeds art and sometimes art proceeds science, but they are always an attempt to describe the world and how the world works. To make a major breakthrough in science requires a lot of creativity, and art is in many ways just another way of producing knowledge.

BECAUSE IS A SUPPORTING CONJUNCTION

and the title of Sophie Calle's new show at the Fraenkel Gallery in San Francisco

By Piper H. Olivas

Why don't you open it up?

SOPHIE CALLE: BECAUSE
23 Jan 2020 – 13 Mar 2020

“Because” is a supporting conjunction that introduces clauses of cause and reason. Perhaps Calle gave her show that title to leave the viewer wondering about cause and effect. Because of what, Sophie? Because you can? Because you should or shouldn’t? Sophie Calle is a character, as many would say. Full of original and fantastic ideas, and definitely not lacking a unique personality: Calle has hired detectives to follow her, stalked strangers all the way to different countries, and worked undercover as a maid in order to snoop. So, it’s clear, she’s no stranger to bizarre situations or issues of cause and effect...

FIFTY MILLION DOLLARS OR SO AT SF MOMA

or the worth of art and especially a special Rothko

By Piper H. Olivas

Mark Rothko's No. 14, 1960

There is a relatively large, rather minimal, abstract painting by Mark Rothko on the second floor of the SF Moma, No. 14, 1960. Opinions seem to vary over the painting’s value. For me when looking at a Rothko, context is everything: are you alone while viewing it? Did you take more than a minute to absorb the work? Are you listening to music, or with a friend? Small influences may affect your ability to honestly, effectively absorb a piece of art.

I took a trip to SF MOMA just to see this piece, and went straight to it, as I didn’t want any distractions. I rushed around the corner and stumbled right into a class field trip. The SFMOMA guide acted inquisitive as she scanned the crowd of elementary school children before her and asked, “What do you all feel when you look at this piece? Is it interesting? Emotional?” Perhaps her furrowed brow was unconsciously expressing anxiety about the worth of the work. The children were incredibly quiet, and I was taken back to my own childhood and my own discontent with Rothko. I remember how my father would ramble about the power and emotional intensity of Rothko’s work and, all my eight-year-old brain could think was “Yeah.....I could probably make that.” This seems to be a common response to abstract art, the idea that it takes little to no skill to make.

UNFINISHED BUSINESS

James Turrell's Roden Crater

By Zhihao Wang

The great piece of unfinished art of the 21st century

James Turrell (born May 6, 1943) is an American artist who eschews traditional artistic materials for more ethereal ones, primarily light and space. Turrell won the MacArthur Genius award in 1984. In recent years, Turrell has become famous for his striking installations in large, prestigious museums and there is a great amount of interest in his work-in-progress, Roden Crater, a natural cinder cone crater located outside Flagstaff, Arizona, that he is turning into a massive naked-eye observatory.

A MAMMOTH MEDITATION ON ARTISTIC PLACE

Xu Bing's brilliant The Book from the Sky

By Wen Zhao

Mammoth

Xu Bing’s The Book from the Sky is one of the most monumental pieces of art of the 21st century. Rather interestingly much of its force comes from the way Bing’s piece embodies one of the most significant political and social tensions of the 21st century and that is the relationship between China and America. On the first point, you don’t need to trust me, almost every person who sees The Book from the Sky finds it overwhelming, but in my mind, it’s the second point that truly raises it to real brilliance.

VOYEURS TO DISASTER

A daring "Acting Out" at Bard Hessel

By Piper H. Olivas

Acting Up and Out

Taking a step into the Bard Hessel museum’s recent show is not only visually overwhelming, but also intensely emotional. One might say that it’s staggering. The exhibit “Acting Out” takes its inspiration from artist Leigh Ledare’s The Task, a single-channel film that documents a three-day Group Relations Conference that the artist organized in Chicago in 2017.

MR. TAMBOURINE POSTER

the most psychedelic poster of a psychedelic era

By Tiffany Xu

Psychedelic Dylan

Color isn’t just color. It is the visual perception of light produced by our eyes, brain, and, perhaps strangely, our life experiences. Consider that some people can technically see while still not being able to see. The light we see by the naked eye is generated by electromagnetic waves with a narrow wavelength range. Electromagnetic waves of different wavelengths show different colors. Blue is the color of a particular wavelength, say, for example, the blue sky. In many ways, color is a kind of message that we read through many different influences—mechanical, psychological, etc. As a graphic designer, I’m most interested in the psychological effects of color.

A MANIFESTO

on the question of art and free expression

By Michelle Kim

How free is your brush?

Art is an activity that seeks to give shape to human emotions, beauty, and ideals. In order to be genuine, it needs full freedom of expression. The influence of art on human life promotes cultural diversity, yet it is not simply a tool to express ideas. Art often can focus people’s minds. It can solve and question difficult social relations that plague our society. Not only that, it can create new ideas and values that can go beyond conventional ones. The position is that art should provide lessons and examples to enhance human morality, that art can be aimed at cultivating the potential of a more loving and moral audience. That’s certainly very utopian and I’m sure we would all like to see this.

THE PURPOSE OF ART

ambiguity or data sets

By Ben Conway

Beautiful, isn't it

People frequently misunderstand the purpose of art. One common misconception is that art must be ambiguous in its meaning. Another common misconception treats art and science as polar opposites. These ideas are widespread, and also completely wrong. There are numerous historical examples of artists attempting to communicate unambiguously.

JUNJI ITO'S UZUMAKI IS THE NEW TERROR

or the horrible truth of the uncanny

By Starlyiana Osias

Junji Ito’s Japanese manga Uzumaki (published in 1998) like most Japanese horror leans toward the psychological, rather than the violent or monstrous. Although it is categorized as psychological horror, it employs several other sub-genres, including mystery, the supernatural, suspense/thriller, and the most important of them all, Lovecraftian cosmic psychological despair. Uzumaki is about a town, Kurozucho, plagued by the curse of the spiral. Through a series of short stories, we gradually learn about the town, the scope of the plague, and how it all relates to the two main characters, Kirie Goshima and Shuichi Saito. Is it frightening? Yes, sometimes, but not in a there’s-a-monster-in–the-house way. What’s scary is how the normal becomes inexplicable, and the characters can’t truly grasp and/or explain what they are seeing. And we as readers become similarly confused about what’s right before us.

PAT PERRY AND THE POLITICS OF WORK

illustration as a way of life

By William Greeley

Many of the great themes of Pat Perry

I recently took a trip back to my hometown, Grand Rapids Michigan, where I visited family and friends. Coming from the Bay Area, going home is always a bit of a culture shock. Grand Rapids is uneventful and very conservative. One night, while grabbing drinks with old High School friends, I found myself in the middle of an intense argument over who’s 9-5 job is better and who makes the most money. At this moment I realized how different my views of work are and how leaving home and becoming an illustrator has changed me.

THE IDEA OF THE UNSPOILED WILDERNESS

the image Ansel Adams created

By Laura Heywood

Clearing Winter Storm, Yosemite National Park, Ansel Adams

When we think about wilderness, we think of nature untouched by man. If you plan a trip to the wilds you probably think of an uninhabited place that is unspoiled by man or woman. It’s interesting that we don’t consider our National Parks to be under the control of the federal government, but they are. I remember when I visited Yosemite in the summer of 2016 the valley was covered in shuttle buses, stores, lodges, traffic, etc. I was taken back by so much activity in the unspoiled wilderness. But don’t get me wrong, walk in the opposite direction and Yosemite still has the appearance of pristine wilderness.

THREADING COOL

in art we never lose anything

By Aaron ("M27") Ruiz

It change the world!

When the urinal got flipped upside down and tagged the moniker R. Mutt, Marcel Duchamp sent the art world and everything we knew into a new dimension. The Dadaists were the first artists to explore what it meant to be an artist in the vortex of the urban world. They found a home in cities all throughout Europe, and slipping through New York. And from New York their influence splintered all over the US into a variety of different social and artistic movements. Some of these movements might seem highly unlikely, like “The New Negro Movement”, but that’s how culture works. It slips and slides past the censors of good taste and possibility. So nothing you know is new; the past is always present and alive in the future. Since Dada burst on the scene, the young have created social and artistic movement from different cliques and racial backgrounds. These movements rely on the passing of knowledge from one generation to the next, with each generation progressively building on the previous one’s ideas. These movements rely heavily on what is literally the state of cool. But art movements require catalysts. Music, art, fashion, philosophy, aesthetics, and of course drugs, have all served as the markers for new movements; but what they really need is a real person to help drive them. Duchamp was one of these, and I’m going to key you in on a couple more.

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