Kaledo Art
wallacepolsom
Xuebing Du
$LAYYYTER
PUT YOUR BEARD IN MY MOUTH
hello vonnie
Sade Olutola
Andulka
shark vs the universe
occasionally subtle
trying on a metaphor
Show & Tell
we're not kids anymore.
Kiana Khansmith
blake kathryn
No title available
oozey mess
@theartofmadeline
almost home
Janaina Medeiros
seen from India
seen from Malaysia
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from Brazil
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from Malaysia
seen from Pakistan
seen from Sweden
seen from Brazil
seen from United States
seen from India
seen from Ukraine
seen from India
seen from Poland
seen from Tunisia
seen from Jamaica
seen from Moldova
@mokonablogs
Finished product -- papercutting
This project’s focus was on reimagining 2D font in a three dimensional setting. By repeating the letter at 60 degree rotation, I created a pattern form that could be interlocked to form shapes. The end result was a paper sphere with a smaller sphere inside, bright red contrasting the black exterior.
Progress work
Cut paper
Kitagawa Utamaro may be a recognized for his art today, but that he is even known at all is remarkable. Born in Edo period Japan in 1753, he became recognized for his printmaking skills (Munsterberg 324). He was a member of the Ukiyo-e school (Phaidon 846), which focused on painting scenes of entertainment and nightlife such as kabuki, courtesans and allegorical stories (Fahr-Becker 531). Ukiyo-e were marketed towards the chonin class, largely merchants lesser than the samurai class, and prints were seen as low art in contrast to the refined art of painting (531). This meant that ukiyo-e artists generally went unrecognized and relatively anonymous during their lifetime (Kobayashi 69). Utamaro was one of the few that became famous while he was alive, and this can be credited to a few factors: publication, Japonisme, and his own skill. A lifetime partnership with Tsutaya Juzaburo, one of the most influential publishers of the time, rocketed Utamaro into the forefront of book illustration and subsequently printmaking (71). The rise of Japonismein the west around the same time period meant that prints travelled almost worldwide and brought the art of ukiyo-e higher respect. But Utamaro himself would have not made history as he did without his skill and ingenuity, bringing forward the art form with the use of coloured lines and the creation of a new genre called bijin okubi-e (7).
Utamaro began his career at the age of twenty-two by creating kabuki posters (74), but quickly graduated to the more refined, but still ‘low art’, depictions of courtesans (Fahr-Becker 533). Kubi-e prints, head and shoulder prints, depicted famous women of the floating world, the Edo red-light district (531). Ukiyo-e prints were considered lower in value partially because they were meant for mass media, but mainly due to the subject matters they dealt with. Utamaro would come to refine the genre during his lifetime, only to subsequently predict its fall. He produced his best work during the Kansei era (1789 – 1801), under the patronage of Tsutaya Juzaburo, an up-and coming publisher that would soon gain eminence in his own area (Kobayashi 68). They became close friends quickly, and it was Juzaburo that formally introduced Utamaro to the printing world. Despite mainly depicting courtesans, Utamaro maintained a sense of class throughout his artistic career and tended to veer away from shunga (Phaidon 846), the more explicit erotica. Rather, his works focused on his version of ideal beauty and femininity. Although Utamaro did marry, his wife died before him and any children that they may have had died young (Kobayashi 82). Juzaburo died before Utamaro, in 1797, and his work declined steadily after that (91). In part because of a rapid output in work, his pieces declined in quality, loosing elegance and becoming more delicate (92). His decline foreshadowed, or revealed, the decline of Edo culture and the sleazier aspects of print artists to follow in his wake. He feel ill and died at the age of fifty-three, and with no children his grave soon fell into disrepair. It was rebuilt in 1917, a sign of his lasting impact on the world of art (92).
Stylistically, Utamaro is known for his woodblock printing. Invented in China and first appearing in Japan around the fifth century, it can be used to print both plain black and in colour (Fahr-Becker 531-2). Multicolour printing required the use of separate blocks, one for each colour, that were layered to achieve the finished product (532). Utamaro is known to this day for his distinct use of red to colour the outlines of his women. Previously, and even after him, almost all print outlines were made solely in black. This small and subtle change gave Utamaro’s works a distinct softness to the skin (Phaidon 846). He also used a technique called kirazuri to improve his works, layering a mica dust background (Kobayashi 7). His most notable original style was bijin okubi-e. Rather than depict the courtesans full bodies, Utamaro focused solely on their heads and shoulders so as to emphasize their facial features (7). With his flowing lines and attention to individual appearances, he had a knack for revealing the mood of his subjects (Fahr-Becker 533).
Utamaro is most known for his Poem of the Pillow, but he varied in styles. The peak of his bijin okubi-e works were Great Love Themes in Classical Poetry (Kasen koi no bu) and Ten Studies in Female Physiognomy (fujin sogaku juttai) (Kobayashi 90). He also attempted at certain points to expand the scope of ukiyo-e in prints such as A Collection of Crawling Creatures and A Multitude of Birds, going beyond the pleasure quarters in his range (83). In doing so, he attempted to elevate the common art of printmaking to higher status. Sadly, this would never come to fruition.
During the Edo period, woodblock prints were seen as low art in contrast to painting. Despite that, they had a massive influence elsewhere in the world, especially in the Japoniste era of the impressionists and post-impressionists. Whistler, Monet and van Gogh all took inspiration from prints, and Utamaro’s Poem of the Pillow is considered the best-known Japanese print series in the west (Fahr-Becker 531). Pillow books, when first created, were intended as educational devices for women about to be married (531). Twelve colour woodblock prints, one for each month, would depict different sexual positions in order to prepare the young bride for marriage (531). Later, they would become cruder and meant for a larger variety of audience, but Utamaro depicted everything in his book tastefully (Phaidon 846). Currently housed in the British Museum, each print is relatively large, at 25.5 cm by 36.9 cm (846). The most well-known of the set, perhaps because of its tamer nature, is Lovers in an Upstairs Room. Showing off Utamaro’s delicate linework and exquisite pattering, it depicts two lovers kissing (relatively) chastely on what appears to be a balcony (Fahr-Becker 535). Open areas were commonly depicted in shunga – brothels tended to be overcrowded and lacking in privacy; subsequently, voyeurism was often emphasized. The woman bears her neck, an erogenous zone at the time, while the two intertwine their bare legs, hinting about the nature of what is to come in the following pages. Because of Utamaro’s influence on both Japanese and western art and the popularity of Poem of the Pillow, Lovers in an Upstairs Room is possibly the most recognizable woodblock print in existence.
Kitagawa Utamaro had a long and successful career and remains the best-known Japanese print artist to this day. The advancements he made to the ukiyo-e printing, including coloured lines and bijin okubi-e, brought about the highest era of ukiyo-e printmaking. He could easily be considered the finest ukiyo-e artist ever.
References
Fahr-Becker, Gabriele (Ed.). The Art of East Asia. H.F.Ullmann Publishing, 2006.
Kobayashi, Tadashi. Utamaro: Portraits from the Floating World. Kodansha International Ltd.,
1993.
Munsterberg, Hugo. Dictionary of Chinese and Japanese Art. Hacker Art books, 1981.
Phaidon Press. 30,000 Years of Art: The story of human creativity across time and space.
Phaidon Press Inc., 2007.
font
Front/Fin artist's statement
This project’s focus was on experimenting with different design techniques such as shape and colour to create large emotional changes out of small shape changes and different colour palettes. By distinguishing between warm and cool colours, I was able to create two images that have distantly different sentiments encompassing them. I worked in gouache, which was effective in creating the solid, strong colours that my composition required.
Front and End
Font
In progress - exercise in colour and form
SCADamp 150: Design your slide deck
SCADamp 150: Design your slide deck is an excellent resource in learning how to create slide decks for presentations. While I did know a lot of it from past experience, the aspects that were valuable to me centred around movement.
One of the interesting things that the presenter told us was that the audience will always read faster than you can speak. So to keep them from being distracted and reading ahead, it's a good idea to animate the points so as to not appear until you talk about them. That way, the audience doesn't get ahead.
Another interesting idea was to animate the title of each section, moving it smaller and into the corner for the following slides under the same category. This way, we still know we're in the same section, but it's clear that the topic of the slide is more important than the general subject you're talking about.
Overall I found it to be very worth it.
Stuart Davis and the art of words and colour
Stuart Davis, an old American painter, created murals and paintings that effectively combined images, shapes and words. Carefully thought out and planned though months of progress, he still desired the impact to be spontaneous on the viewer.
He was inspired by a large quantity of things, including architecture, music, colour, industrialization, and household objects. Jazz especially had influenced a lot of his work, as he believed it corresponded with his idea of America. He felt that his work was American, but beyond that, representative of the urban, modern world in general.
His approach to colour and words is somewhat blasé, despite his thought-out processes. He felt that words had their own meaning and feelings, just as shapes did. He would choose colours appropriate to the purpose and attitude fo the work, and preferred colour over texture. In general, he felt that no colour or word had one designation, and instead had meaning when placed in context.
He has had a relatively static style over the course of his lifetime, with paintings not changing substantially over fifty years. He feels as though their purpose, and subsequently the person creating them, has stayed relatively the same.
Finished project
This project’s focus was on experimenting with aspects of an image and seeing how size, scale and use can change its meaning. By taking one image with multiple different elements, resizing and reconfiguring them, I was able to create two images that have distinct composition and focal points. I worked in two mediums: colour photoshop and greyscale gouache. The colour image was effective in creating a distinct foreground and background through contrast, and the greyscale achieved the same effect through tonal use.
learning about photoshop
The finished greyscale piece