#contemporaryartresearch

[eliza-abejo]

⮤ Second attempt at painting a cola can (Author’s own, unpublished 2020).

I’m so happy with how this one turned out - it’s definitely a lot cleaner after taking the time to hand-paint the final details and simplifying my stencils so that they’re made to fill in only large blocks of colour in the overall composition. Eventually when my teacher get back to me though, I would like to try my hand at silk-screening prints to see if that makes any difference to my work.

At this point, my goal is to start deciding on what my final four posters will be. The illustrations are done, but I do want to keep looking into the work of Saul Bass as his posters are like what I’ve tried to do here - stencilled, blocky and simple illustrations. For movie posters, I feel minimal designs are more effective than ones with far too much information on them - so this seems to be the best place to go next from here. 

After looking at Bass’ work, the next step - as mentioned in the checklist I made earlier on this year - is to review my illustrations to see if they convey the points Hawke made in Ideology. In Hawkes’ book, I came across the topic of hegemony which might be an interesting thing to look into next. Perhaps that aspect of ideology may feed into a design for a fifth poster (should I need it for the final display of all my works).  I also feel that re-watching the movie another time - now after doing this research - may also inspire me to make changes to my posters and some final edits.

To close off my research, some time will definitely be spent on researching some design programs that are accessible to me. For this I plan to watch some tutorials so that I can familiarise myself with basic controls, tools and design techniques and try new things that I haven’t done before (e.g. masking parts off and embedding textures the way Gravillis Inc. did). 

[eliza-abejo]

⮤ Results of painting a coca-cola can using a paper stencil (Author’s own, unpublished 2020).

It’s finally dried and I’m thankful that because of the white writing and red colour, you can still tell that this is picture is meant to be of a coca-cola can, but it’s horribly done. I can easily clean it up by hand-painting smaller details though, which I can easily come back to later.

[eliza-abejo]

⮤ Such Good Friends poster by Saul Bass (Bass, 1971) and Blue Nude II (1952) by Henri Matisse (MoMA 2014) .

Another artist I feel is relevant to the style I’m aiming for and the final pieces I want to make is American graphic designer Saul Bass. Born in 1920, Saul Bass made movie posters/promotional material for many iconic films including the Shining and Vertigo, as well as some brand logos for Kleenex and AT&T.

Bass is known for being the man who changed graphic design... or at least, that what an article told me when I first came across his work in my graphic design classes in high-school. When it came to his theatrical posters, Bass would break down iconic scenes and plots into simple shapes and compositions - much like those at Gravillis Inc. have done. What makes his theatrical posters different, however, is that they were all created with a simple palette and done in flat, solid colour.

For example, when looking at this poster for the 1971 film Such Good Friends by Bass, one may recognise within it the paper-cut style of Henri Matisse and his blue nude cut-outs. 

As a film that follows the story of housewife Julie Messingers who has her own affairs after discovering those of her husband, we see why Saul’s inspiration (the nude that obscures sexual parts of the body) may have been his choice for the film. Like her husband, Julie tries to hide her guilt, pain and rebellious affairs in the movie from her peers and husband - resulting in many complications for the character.

REFERENCES MENTIONED:

Bass, S 1971, Image of Such Good Friends Threatical Poster, Letterboxd, viewed 22 September 2020, <https://letterboxd.com/film/such-good-friends/>. 

MoMA 2014, Image of Blue Nude II by Henri Matisse, Museum of Modern Art, viewed 22 September 2020, <https://www.moma.org/audio/playlist/6/316>.

[eliza-abejo]

⮤ Identifying layers in a Coca-Cola graphic and beginning preparations (Author’s own, unpublished, 2020; RetroPlanet USA, 2013).

As the silk-screening process will require the guidance of a teacher I’m still trying to get in contact with, I chose to draft/practice making prints with stencils as practice. After finding a simple coca-cola can graphic from RetroPlanetUSA (a shape close to what I will design for one of my posters later), I identified the different layers in the graphic - a technique that I know will be involved in the graphic designing part of my research later.

As a simple graphic, it was easy to identify the three layers as three different colours on the page: a dark red, lighter salmon red and white. Once I did, I printed the graphic onto three pieces of card paper so that I can use X-ACTO knives to cut out the appropriate parts later.

REFERENCES MENTIONED: RetroPlanetUSA 2013, Image of Coca-Cola Can, Etsy, viewed 15 September 2020, <https://www.etsy.com/au/listing/631422893/coca-cola-can-vinyl-sticker-pop-art>.

[eliza-abejo]

⮤ ‘Marilyn Diptych’ (1962) by Andy Warhol with my annotations and a photograph of the real at Tate Modern Museum (Author’s own, unpublished 2020; Piancastelli, 2009).

I believe my favourite artwork by Andy Warhol aside from the Campbell’s Soup Cans is this Marilyn Diptych that was created in 1962. Made shortly after the drug overdose and death of American actress Marilyn Monroe, Warhol created this giant diptych of the artist to immortalise the actress’ public & private life and/or the life and death of this celebrity. It seems a bit inappropriate to behold the sex symbol’s publicity still over and over again on panels measuring to be 2048mm across and 1448mm in height. Especially in a diptych, two panels that are often found in places of worship to display saints and the holy family. Here, I’m fascinated by the way Warhol uses not only repetition but colour to demonstrate how fame had changed the actress’ life, although if people knew her story - they’d probably argue whether it was changed for better or for worse.

When she became an actress, Marilyn Monroe got rid of her birth name and original identity as Norma Jean Baker. As the panel on the left shows her portrait becoming progressively saturated in colour to highlight the growth and peak of her fame, the panel to the right tracks her identity of Norma Jean Baker progressively fading away. At the same time, viewers may note the panel to the left as a sign of her growing fame before she died and her memory was soon forgotten. Perhaps then the saturation (and repetition of her face) represents her relevance and echoes her constant appearance in mainstream media at the time.

Truly, Marilyn Monroe was the most famous woman of America at the time, even though her real life is something not many would want. Although there were people behind the scenes who would have known about the actress’ broken past and substance abuse, no-one changed anything about it. She, herself, chose not to quit and decided to learn to live with it before she couldn’t anymore. It reminds of the injustices we see in Sorry to Bother You and how uneducated who did not know where to begin with the protests just chose to do nothing about it and allow the problems to continue.

REFERENCES MENTIONED:

Piancastelli, B 2009, Image of the Marilyn Diptych in the Tate Modern Museum, 4 December, Flickr, viewed 15 September 2020, <https://www.flickr.com/photos/babichasingrainbows/4359387212/>.

Tate Modern n.d., Marilyn Diptych (1962), Tate Modern, viewed 15 September 2020, <https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/warhol-marilyn-diptych-t03093>.

[eliza-abejo]

⮤ 'Double Elvis’ (1963) & ‘Campbell Soup Cans’ (1962) by Andy Warhol with my annotations (MoMA Learning, n.d.a; MoMA Learning, n.d.c; Author’s own, unpublished, 2020).

Remembering that American artist Andy Warhol (1928–1987) had worked with images from films, tabloid magazines, and advertisements, I chose to analyse some of his work today and see if I could adapt some of his techniques into my own creative process (MoMa Learning, n.d.c). What I like about Warhol’s work is that the process of making them becomes part of the story or thoughts he is trying to convey. ‘Double Elvis’ (1963), for example, was cut off from a large, continuous line of Elvises - as if to display each frame of the 1960 film the still was taken from: Flaming Star (MoMa Learning, n.d.a). In making art more accessible to the general public and reflecting on the rise of consumerism and mass-produced goods in the 1960s, Warhol hand-painted and printed the Campbell Soup Cans. In a way, the repetition of the artist’s movements turned Warhol into the same machines that produced the original product as he also produced each can using the same steps in the same order. Like the real cans, although identical at a distance, looking at the cans up close allows for the viewers to see the small differences between each of them. These differences that machines can still create as they are still unable to achieve true perfection. All 32 cans also corresponded to the 32 different flavours Campbell’s had released at the time and have been displayed to look like the cans stacked on grocery shelves (MoMA Learning, n.d.c). I wonder whether I can use this repetition of products for the cola poster I had planned to make that critiqued how capitalist ideologies redirect attention in the film.

REFERENCES MENTIONED: MoMA Learning n.d.a, Double Elvis (1963), MoMA Learning, viewed 10 September 2020, <https://www.moma.org/learn/moma_learning/andy-warhol-double-elvis-1963/>.

MoMA Learning n.d.b, Image of Double Elvis (1963) by Andy Warhol, MoMA Learning, viewed 10 September 2020, <https://www.moma.org/learn/moma_learning/andy-warhol-double-elvis-1963/>. 

MoMA Learning n.d.c, Campbell’s Soup Cans (1962), MoMA Learning, viewed 10 September 2020, <https://www.moma.org/learn/moma_learning/andy-warhol-campbells-soup-cans-1962/>.

MoMA Learning n.d.c, Image of Campbell’s Soup Cans (1962), MoMA Learning, viewed 10 September 2020, <https://www.moma.org/learn/moma_learning/andy-warhol-campbells-soup-cans-1962/>.

[eliza-abejo]

⮤ Drafting ideas for the poster redesigns (Author’s own, unpublished, 2020).

I finally got to draft some ideas for my poster redesigns based on the connections I made between Sorry to Bother You and what I learnt from Hawkes’ book on Ideology. Here I was mainly focused on layout and potential quotes/phrases I could use for 4 to 5 different posters. In addressing the four forms in which ideologies presents itself, I realised that most of them intertwined with each other. Keeping to simple designs of at least one image and/or some text, I want each poster to be thought-provoking with certain statements and questions that point out the key dilemmas explored by Riley (e.g. ‘If I had a million bucks for every time I was humiliated and abused I’d be a reality TV star’ to mirror the problem with people doing anything for money). Like the Bumblebee posters from GRAVILLIS, I’d also like these posters to be pieces of art on their own.

Before I get into typefaces, fonts, and colours, I’d like to look into a few works by artists who’ve worked in film and commercial prints (e.g. pop artists) as inspiration for my posters and illustrations.

REFERENCES MENTIONED: Hawkes, D 2003, Ideology, Taylor & Francis eBooks, London.

[eliza-abejo]

⮤ Reading David Hawkes’ book on ideology (Author’s own, unpublished, 2020).

I came across this reading from one of my courses on art and critical thinking and chose to revisit it today so that I could look at examples of ideology and how it works. According to Hawkes (and several thinkers), Ideology works through four main ways (including some personal examples I saw in Sorry to Bother You):

Ideologies naturalise themselves as being common sense and normal. The plot of Sorry to Bother You is guided by this main idea in particular: the idea that living (happily) must be earned through hard work. Here, Riley shows the extremities and exploitation of this saying. For Cassius, a black American, he stands to use his white voice to get himself a better life and better pay. Ironically, Riley’s choice to make the ‘white voice’ a tool for human improvement also becomes a prop up racial supremacist ideologies. In a less subtle approach, a Worryfree billboard tells the public to ‘show the world that they’re a responsible babydaddy’, which promotes patriarchal ideologies by seeing husbands and fathers as the real money-makers in their households.

Ideologies disguise themselves by becoming invisible. In the film, we often catch a glimpse of a television gameshow called ‘I got the sh*t kicked out of me’ where people are humiliated and beaten in exchange for cash. This works as the Riley’s rather extreme criticism on how we’ve learnt to accept and be okay with watching shows that entertain its audience at the expense of their others’ emotional and physical wellbeing (e.g. wipe-out involving people being flung off for money). 

Ideologies redirect attention by shifting responsibility to someone or something else. In Sorry to Bother You, we see this shift between Cassius and an anonymous Regalview protestor. After exploiting the labour of the Regalview callers (even against the wishes of his own girlfriend and friends), a protester exploits his image after a video of her throwing a coke can at his head goes viral. Suddenly, our anger at Cassius (although he continues to continue his morally terrible job) is shifted to the protester who profits off this fame (we see her as a celebrity in a coca cola ad later).

Ideologies distort understanding by masking inconsistencies and contradictions. Steve Lift markets the Worryfree Company as an opportunity that people can voluntarily sign up for, guaranteeing them a house, food and bed for life - all in exchange for a lifetime of labour. While Worryfree workers aren’t threatened and literally live ‘worry free’, it does not entirely mask that Lift’s ‘program’ is another form of slave labour.

On page 36, Hawkes notes Niccol Macchiavelli’s thoughts on how humans have an ‘urge’ to continue on with living their lives as they always have been as creating change can involve far too much effort/they feel it’ll cause more problems for them. We even see proof of this when Cassius exposes Steve Lift’s plans and character Squeeze (played by Steven Yeun) say that these wrongdoing can be far too ingrained into society that people choose to learn and live with them.

REFERENCES MENTIONED:

Hawkes, D 2003, Ideology, Taylor & Francis eBooks, London.