Artspiration

Art school is hard. A long-suffering journey into inspiration. (University of the Arts London) [everything not tagged "my work" is not made by me]

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Are you sure this is a good idea?

hey guys! I realise this is really really stupid, but I changed art blogs and forgot to mention it on here! I moved to see0through.tumblr.com in september as a way to re-motivate myself to blog about art but I didn't think to mention it on here because I didn't realise this blog had followers. (i know, not my brightest moment :/)

So if you want to follow on there it could be neat, but no pressure :D Thanks for looking at this blog, it made me happy in my heart!

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if you can spot it, the quote is from Catullus "To Asinius Marrucinus".

the inscriptions were found near Athens (well i found them here personally : http://www.csad.ox.ac.uk/csad/Images.html).

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Some new work that, after reflection, I think looks better in digital form.

I love mosaics because it's very difficult to convey expression, it's inherent to the medium of gluing together lots of tiny pieces to make an image, not much precision on the facial features. As a result, greek and roman mosaics often have unfortunate expressions, that are inappropriately sassy for the occasion/time they were meant to celebrate.

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more patterns! from the later galleries

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Antique patterns that I've used or considered using.

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More helmets, I actually love the shapes, I find them very graphic! 

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Tiny art! The one with the magnifying glass really impressed me : the level of skill that has to take! Also that alone is enough proof that there was professional artists in those time : the level of no life required to achieve this is impossible if you don't get paid for it.

And I thought the second one was just plain adorable, hits you right in the feelings : it's so simple yet you can project so much onto it. For me it looks like he's pleading, extending a hand with eyes all sad.

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This reads "andokides made me", which is found on a vase (i had to take a picture of the exhibition poster though, damn you glass reflection!). I find this quite funny because the feeling of DIY pride is strong in us since the dawn of ages, and the artist always signs his piece! Also how cute is it that it's worded like the vase itself was informing the reader. This could means they already personified objects and assigned to inanimate stuff human emotion. This leads wandering minds to image greek youth complaining about how their charriot hates them or slowly muttering to their wobbling perfume vase "oh come on, don't break, i'll love you forever!".

ok maybe i read too far into stuff but no one can actually disprove me, so until then, i choose to believe that this happened!

The second picture is an archer wearing a Phrygian cap, which is now symbol of liberty and the country of France, worn by its personification, the Marianne. This is the unfortunate picture I used for my card that didn't turn out so well.

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The ballots for the votes! How cool to actually see them after reading about them so much, I was really excited!

And the second picture is just a really cool looking bowl. Isn't this bowl really pretty? I'll keep the picture in case I have the occasion the recreate a bowl one day!

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Perikles, a respectable looking fellow, famous head of Athenian state. I admit liking him not because of himself (he was quoted as describing the ideal woman as the one whom the men refer the less, in good or in bad) but because of Aspasia, his partner. In a perfect example of "talk the talk, don't walk the walk", his romantic interest Aspasia was a fierce foreign woman frequently referenced by plays and philosophers. Apparently, Persian Prince Cyrus renamed his favourite mistress after her! (i know right, crazy times!)

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See what I mean about their problem with conveying emotion? And the museum's commentary on that one really made me laugh, it was something like "an unhappy Andromeda...". Hell yeah she looks unhappy xD

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This was so different then the other pieces of work that I felt compelled to take a a picture. From the round figure, with all the patterns to the white background and the subject, I found this very special. Makes you wonder about how it was made and what the maker thought of its subject.

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Usefulness of what is in my bibliography

So uhm I don't really get what I'm supposed to do in this exercise, should I explain the content of all books? Well, they're all about roman history and what silly shenanigans happened during that time, which I highly recommend you read if you're interested in the subject (that's why I did it), but not really if you're on a tight schedule and don't really care.

Onto the BIBLIOGRAPHY :

Books

Beaton, K. (2011) – Hark! A Vagrant. London: Jonathan Cape.

Probably inspired me a lot in starting this project (also it's hilarious and educational)

Ramage, N. H. (1995) – Roman Art : Romulus to Constantine. London : Laurence King.

Very comprehensive, some inspiring statues but a bit too long for me to go in in detail.

Ovid. (1993) – The art of love. London : Folio Society.

Extremely relevant, as it's basically "How to pick up girls, Rome Edition".

Sherwin-White, A. N. (1966) – The Letters of Pliny : A historical and social commentary. Oxford : Clarendon Press.

Highly technical, super unhelpful, a lot of historical explanations and accuracies. Thank god I knew the letters before hand and knew how to actually find them. (ie. not in a south london library, they really aren't all that into classics)

Livy. (1849) – A History of Rome. London : Bohn.

So massive, that something incredible happen : I thanked my latin teacher in my heart for making me learn by heart the relevant bits, as I found them quite easily. The integration of other populations and how far Rome should go with that was quite relevant as it's quite similar to the debate about Europe and who should be in it.

Catullus,G. V. (1989) – The Poems of Catullus. Bristol : Classicals.

Incredibly helpful, I was highly surprised by the contents, which were, in some places, even worse than what you might find now. So grown men could have the emotional attitude of fourteen years olds in the ancient world as well!

Juvenal. (1958) – The Satires of Juvenal. Bloomington : Indiana University Press.

His satire against women is actualy hilarious and most of his points are exactly the one that mysoginist continue to make today. (if you don't sleep around you're a frigid bitch, but if you do you're a slutty whore etc.) But this dude basically hates everything.

Artistophanes. (1973) – Lysistrata and Other Plays. London : Penguin Group.

Aristophanes. (1994) – Aristophanes & Menander : New Comedy. London : Methuen Drama

Had a hard time getting through, again too long for the time period, so I just skimmed the Socrates related bits, I admit it :/ Also again about the women, greek style this time, they were really horrible about them in Athens, seriously.

Plautus, T.M. (1964) – Rope and other plays. Harmondsworth : Penguin.

Normal slapstick comedy, the theme of the rebellious teen, Molière completely ripped off this play to write The Miser, transcribing it almost scene by scene into his time.

Wright, F. A. (1938) – Three Roman poets: Plautus, Catullus, Ovid: Their lives, times and works. London: Routledge

More info about those who inspired and fuelled my work, so yeah quite helpful, specially for context purposes.

Amiet, P. (1981) – Art in the Ancient World : A handbook of styles ands forms. London : Faber and Faber Limited

The single most useful book of the creation : this book saved my life. It's so thick it could probably take a bullet for me anyway! I took the ancient world part of my three cards from this book! The Mark look-a-like and the Statue of Liberty one I reproduced in my own style and I scanned the boy on a toy horse one directly from its pages as well.

Cook, B. F. (1976) – Greek and Roman Art in the British Museum. London : British Museum Publications Ltd.

This really helped me to understand what I was looking at! I want to volunteer as a guide now, I was so well informed by this book! Also great reference material!

Hinks, R. P. (1935) – Greek and Roman Portrait Sculpture. London : British Museum Publications Ltd.

Again, this was reference material for drawing. It was quite effective!

Vout, C. (2006) – Antinous the face of the antique. Leeds : Henry Moore Institute

Not that relevant in the end but such a beautiful book and subject it was really worth it. I got some drawings out of it so it's still not that useless.

Clarke, J. R. (2003) – Art in the lives of ordinary romans. London : University of California Press Ltd.

Really interesting, but unfortunately, again, too long for me to really get into, so not that useful I'd say.

Holmes, B. (1998) – Programming with Java. London : Josh and Bartlett Publishers International

This book was ridiculously outdated, and I admit that's half of why I bought it : it's really funny to see how it was taught in the past as opposed to how it is taught now.

Tittel, E. (2007) – HTML4 et Javascript pour les nuls. Paris : Editions First Interactive

I book this book what, 4 years ago? I was just so glad to finally be using it seriously.

2. Exhibitions

British Museum. (2011) - The cost of living in Roman and modern Britain. London : The British Museum

Interesting in a hobby point of view, but didn't really end up using the material I learned from it.

3. Websites

British Museum/Explore (2012) [Online]. [Accessed 16 February 2012] Available from the World Wide Web: <http://www.britishmuseum.org/explore/highlights/highlights_search_results.aspx?RelatedId=1811>0,3 it was this website that convinced me that yes, the british museum would be my new place of residence during this project

How Products Are Made (2012) [Online]. [Accessed 31 March 2012] Available from the World Wide Web : < http://www.madehow.com/Volume-4/Playing-Cards.html#b> informative about cards and how they're made, did exactly what it said on the tin and i'm thankful for that.

The World of Playing Cards (1996 – 2012) [Online]. [Accessed 26 March 2012] Available from the World Wide Web : <http://www.wopc.co.uk/history/index.html> same, plus helpful images of cards in the past.

Who's Jack (2012) [Online]. [Accessed 2 April 2012] Available from the World Wide Web : <http://www.whosjack.org/trafalgar-square-new-fourth-plinth/> that's the site where I took the picture of the Trafalgar Square sculture from! So yeah, 100% useful.

Vroma (2012) [Online]. [Accessed 21 Mars 2012] Available from the World Wide Web : <http://www.vroma.org/~hwalker/VRomaCatullus/list.html > Helped me for Martial, but also for some missing Catullus!

Poetry in Translation (2000-2012) [Online]. [Accessed 21 Mars 2012] Available from the World Wide Web : <http://www.poetryintranslation.com/> Same, very helpful especially with who were each of the names mentioned in Catullus' poems. Forever a place in my heart for poor Juventius.

4. Museums

The Huntarian Collection:

not useful for my project but so fascinating! (the skelleton of a giant was my favourite!) also either their site is a lying liar because they said they had a collection of roman/greek art, either I'm super blind because I did not find them anywhere.

Sir Joan Soane's Museum

Soooo beautiful and some great reference material, but really impractical for drawing because it so small/crowded.

The British Museum

my new house, great reference for drawing and gave me such a better visual understanding of the roman/greek lives.