NE DILAI

"Creativity is not a competition." -Autumn Sky Hall

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The Princess of Polka Dots

For this weeks blog, I’ve decided to blog about Yayoi Kusama. Yayoi was born in Japan in 1929. She loved drawing and painting and although her parents didn't want her to be an artist but she was very determined. She works with painting, sculpture, film and installation. She has produced a body of work formally unified by its use of repetitive dots, pumpkins, and mirrors. She is the most famous living female artist in the world. Time magazine named her on its "100 Most Influential People" list.

She always defined herself in her own terms. “I am an obsessional artist,” she once said. “People may call me otherwise, but…I consider myself a heretic of the art world.” 

She is the undiscovered genius whose late fame is justly deserved. She is the self-identified psychotic whose difference we champion. She is also the creator of bright, immersive and spectacular art that is uncannily suited to Instagram, the neural network of contemporary influence.

From an early age, she was prone to hallucinations due to mental illness, vivid experiences of the world distorted and enhanced by colors and shapes. By adding dots and all-over marks to her paintings, drawings, objects and clothes she feels as if she is making them and herself)melt into, and become part of, the bigger universe. She also creates environments of dots so that we can experience this feeling of self-obliteration too. 

In the late 1950s she moved to New York as lots of the most exciting art seemed to be happening there. She had the first of many exhibitions there in 1959. She was also one of the first artists to experiment with performance and action art.

One of my favorite art she had produced is the Infinity Mirror Room (which had a breakthrough in 1965). She has produced more than twenty distinct Infinity Mirror Rooms later. Visiting the room is on my bucket list!

Kusama's story resonates with myself and young people around the world. She is the female abuse victim who never married and emerged victorious in spite of ongoing mental illness (she has lived, voluntarily, in a psychiatric hospital since the late 1970s). She met and inspired important artists including Donald Judd, Andy Warhol and Joseph Cornell, and her art was a part of exciting art developments such as pop art and minimalism.

She has truly inspired me to continue creating and believing in myself no matter what other thinks of me. She will always be one of the female role model I look up to in my life. 

More of Yayoi: 

https://www.artsy.net/artist/yayoi-kusama

https://whitney.org/Exhibitions/YayoiKusama

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Awash In Color by Alexa Meade

Since this week, we’re talking about culture, body and self art. I have decided to blog about Alexa Meade. The Washington D.C. native was focused on a career in politics before pivoting to painting after an art class elective in college. With all her accomplishments and career leaps, Mead is breaking ground and reinventing what art means to her.

Painting on canvas was never her key interest. Alexa doesn’t hope to recreate reality in her paintings; she wants to paint reality. She paints on people, fruits, food and other objects. She takes a classical concept: trompe l’oeil which is the art of making a two-dimensional representation look three-dimensional and works in an opposite direction. 

Meade says she struggles to describe the work that she does to people who haven’t seen it. “The largest thing that stood in my way is that I don't have a name for my style of painting, there aren’t words to describe it succinctly” she says.

Her inspiration? She goes through periods where she’s super excited and want to orient every second of her day to it. She says “I find that when I have a moment when I’m actually inspired, I want to make sure that I run with it and that I truly follow that and not to waste any moment of inspiration.” 

Toughest part of creating her art is that she needs to just accept the whatever was created is the final product. But Meade says she wouldn’t have it any other way.

Meade shows off photographs of some of the more outlandish results, and shares a new project involving people, paint and milk.

Meade has been painting full time since 2009 and since then, she has honed in her skills, creating a whole new medium. Her most recent work was painting Ariana Grande for her “God Is a Woman” music video.  In a TedTalk titled “Your Body is My Canvas”, she shared that though this was intimidating at first, she really let her passion drive her. 

Meade has since received significant recognition, proving that it’s never too late to change career paths. Her fame also provides a female voice in the visual art industry, which many artists say is dominated by men. It’s natural that others might want to follow in her footsteps. 

Check out her page at: https://alexameade.com/ 

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This is our world by Steve Cutts

There are many sad truths about today’s world, including the fact we have created a world that is far more stressful than it needs to be. Since this week's topic is about Consumerism in art, I have chosen to blog about Steve Cutts, London born illustrator and animator. Steve Cutts wishes our world were a different place, and so he’s decided to do something about it by using his artwork for change. 

His artwork criticize modern society: modern slavery, smartphone addiction, social media, consumerism, all these topics and more are illustrated uncompromisingly by the British artist which leaves us questioning our own society and our role in it. 

Steve Cutts worked with international brands before deciding to go it alone as a freelancer from 2012. His style is inspired by 1930s and 40s cartoons, as well as modern comic books and graphic novel-like style, full of bold colors, with an intensity that will stay ingrained in your mind for years to come.  

Each scene exposes the sad truth of what is wrong with the world today, with money hungry men and dismal humans being completely controlled by a piece of technology. Vampires, zombies and vapid action films... these are themes that are rarely explored in popular media. 

He illustrates and animates depictions of familiar characters like Roger and Jessica Rabbit in a somewhat humorous, but undoubtedly dark way. 

One of my favorite illustration by Cutts is this bizarre technology, zombie-like phenomena as a terrible reality. His vividly colored illustrations and animations cleverly and satirically portray contemporary society as a series of greedy monsters, zombies, and hollow-eyed humans with no trace of humanity.  

Cutts uses humor in his illustrations to talk about uncomfortable truth yet fun and real way to get the message across. In an interview with nowthenmagazine, he said “it can also be used to explore relationships between individuals and the world we live in….humour can help find truth and also give much needed relief from the quite insane realities we’re living through right now.”  

Some will think his artwork is depressing but I consider it to be a genius work of art, both for his choice of animation style and for his devastating accuracy in calling out the dark and despairing heart of this cultural dead end. It’s more thought provoking which I think is undoubtedly a good thing.

More of Steve Cutts:  http://www.stevecutts.com/ 

Check out his YouTube channel where he animate short films about the sad world we live in today. https://www.youtube.com/user/steviecutts/videos 

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Barbara Kruger - Modern Art Feminist.

American contemporary/conceptual/pop artists Barbara Kruger was born in Newark, New Jersey, she studied at Syracuse University and attended Parsons School of Design later on. Barbara brings modern day problems of society using her art as a message conveyer of society problems. Public exemplifying problems with consumerism, feminism, and power. 

Untitled (your body is a battleground) - 1989

In the late 1970s, Kruger had developed her trademark style: large-scale photographic works that appropriate anonymous cultural images and text and juxtapose them in unexpected ways. The majority of her work deals with black and white images. 

Her grounding in the theoretical connects her with contemporary developments in conceptual art. By manipulating and recontextualizing imagery, Kruger sought to question way accepted sources of power, in this case, the mass media present female identity. Her work lingers in your mind, forcing you to think twice, cliches and catchphrases, introducing ironies into cultural idioms and the conventional wisdom they embed in our brains.

Untitled, Installation at Mary Boone Gallery, New York, January 1991

Kruger’s artwork may seem like the universal message to the world’s audience. Her work is described as “eye-catching” and easily transmitted. In this world, virtual words are becoming virtually weightless and dematerialized. The more words was over us, the less we understand them. And the less we are able to recognized which ones are influencing us - manipulating us subtly, invisibly, insidiously. Barbara Kruger rematerializes words, so that we can read them closely and deeply.  

Performa 17 Biennial, New York City, November 1-19 

Performa 17 Biennial, New York City, November 1-19

Barbara Kruger has extended her aesthetic project, creating public installations of her work in galleries, museums, buildings, train stations, and parks, as well as on buses and billboards around the world. Walls, floors, and ceilings are covered with images and texts, which engulf and even assault the viewer. She considered her art form is more easily to be decoded by the viewers as compared to other forms of art. 

While artwork may be varies in different locations of the exhibit, Kruger's main spirit and concerned issues are of consumerism, the place of womens bodies.   

More of Barbara Kruger artwork:  http://www.artnet.com/artists/barbara-kruger/

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Frida Kahlo revisited by designer Myriam Bottazzi

“I am searching for another form of beauty, one that is not obvious”. This week it’s about Appropriation Art. I have chosen Myriam Bottazzi, a Roman accessory and jewelry and fashion designer. 

 Born in Milan, Myriam has chosen to live and work in Rome. The perception of nature as a source of constant and unlimited inspiration, leads her to experiment with the most diverse combinations of shapes and materials, always faithful to the suggestions of an organic thought that she transmits to her creations.

This is a tribute to Frida Kahlo, a Mexican artist who painted many self-portraits, portraits and works inspired by the nature of Mexico. Frida is synonymous with feminine strength and courage. 

In her homage to the iconic Frida, Myriam has taken some of Frida’s most famous works and created photographic interpretations using her own hand-crafted pieces. The result is a beautiful emulsion of 21st-century fashion and early 20th-century modern art. 

The originality of her work has been particularly appreciated by fashion labels such as Valentino, Les Copains, and Martine Sitbon.

Her studio Atelier Aspecifico is housed in the walls of the historic Pastificio Cerere, the beating heart of Roman contemporary art. As a fashion designer, she designs and produces a line of accessories and ornaments MyriamB, in this path has collaborated in the past with some fashion houses such as Valentino, Maurizio Galante, Les Copains.

The link below is Myriam’s website, it has photographs of her jewelries, fashion and art.

http://www.myriamb.it/shooting/fridaKahlo/index-fridakahlo1.htm