Video Reviews

1. Explain why you selected each of the FOUR videos you choose from the selection listed above.
The four videos I selected are: Andy Warhol: Images of an Image, Abstract Expressionism and Pop: Art of the ‘50s and ‘60s, Uncertainty: Modernity and Art, and Hockney on Photography. I chose these four videos because these are the ones that caught my eye first. I always loved Andy Warhol and his work. The Movie Factory Girl was a film about him, since I saw that movie, I have always admired his work and thought so highly of him; therefore I was very interested in watching this film. Since I always admired Andy Warhol, I wanted to watch the film about Pop art because that is what he was known for. Uncertainty: Modernity and Art sounded interesting and I wanted to know more about this film and what it was about. Hockney on Photography, I chose because photography was always an interested of mine and I thought it would be interesting to hear and watch about the life and the starting up of an actually photographer.


2. For each video list/discuss the key concepts you learned.
Andy Warhol: Images of an Image
Andy Warhol was a very famous artist. Many people know him based on his Marilynn Monroe work or the Campbell soup cans. He was known for doing Pop Art. This video explores the Pop Art movement and the life of Andy Warhol through a penetrating investigation of his deadpan Ten Lizes. This is a painting that exemplifies his fascination with celebrities as objects no less commodified than a simple can of soup. Warhol first started off working as a commercial artist until the 1960s. this is when he began to experiment with advertising images. He worked hard and strong until he died in 1987. Marilyn Monroe and Elizabeth Taylor were fascinating to him. He was very woman inspired. August 1962, Marilynn Monroe had died. He always uses to collect pictures of celebrities out of magazines, cut, and crop and save them. His famous work of Marilynn Monroe was produced by using silk screen. The photographs are blown up and developed onto silk screens. They are then transferred to paper and canvas by ink and paint. Ten Lizes was his work that featured Elizabeth Taylor which was created in 1963. This work also used silk screen as well. Warhol became known for doing silk screen and people liked it; therefore he saw this as a way for him to make some money and he kept on doing it. After silk screening, he went into photography. He started with his friends and soon after he began to film as well. He shot about 100 films. He wanted to change up his silk screen works, so he decided to add some paint to them as well. This was the time of Warhol’s evolution. He produced dozens of self portraits. He labeled himself as an artist journalist. His work addressed race riots, the conquest of the mood, the Cultural Revolution in China and the universal reign of the dollar. Andy Warhol was an amazing artist who never let any of his viewers down. He was a dedicated hard worker who loved what he did.

Abstract Expressionism and Pop: Art of the ‘50s and ‘60s
Abstract expressionism was born form a joining of attitudes in American art and European avant-garde art. Later it was rejected for its nonfigurative and seemingly egocentric character in favor of the ultra-objective phenomenon known as Pop Art. Using Franz Kline’s painting “C&O”, abstract art is being compared to figurative art. The filled space of the canvas is distinctively different in these two styles, abstract art and figurative art. Kline initially injects his work with mood and expression but he moves towards painting colors in undefined spaces therefore it leaves the viewer to imagine. He used shapes to evoke the emotions. The use of action painting reveals a process of constant discovery and leads us into a world of color and form. Helen Frankenthaler was another artist who created “Mountains and Sea” which causes her to energy on the artistic scene and influences a generation of artists. This creates a fundamental change in the way we look at a picture from her straight vision. Her goal was to have the viewers envision and interpret a picture different than her. Her works were both feminine and mystical. The observer will receive a warming sense of fruitfulness in her work. Willem de Koonig was the artist of “Morning: The Springs”. This work expressed movement as an echo of sensations and is evocative of plant forms, light, and falling water. This is a momentary gift of light with a calligraphic quality. In 1952, he made his name with “Women One”. He embraced a passionate and instinctive approach to painting, which created action painting. Jasper John was another artist that is discussed in this film. His paintings undermine our assumptions and make up think. He makes his common subject visually seductive and to deceive our senses as a coherent system of information.

Uncertainty: Modernity and Art
Modern art was an instrument of the chaotic 20th century, which communicates chaos, anxiety and uncertainty. The video will be comparing and contrasting works of Pablo Picasso with the abstracts of Paul Klee and Piet Mondrian and the architecture of Le Corbusier. This tells how the Nazis tried to eradicate modern art’s uncertainties with some crushing certainties of their own. It also shows how modern art’s relationship with modern life changes. It started with the rise of Abstract Expressionism, and then continued with Pop Art. Greek statues were a reflection of Man as an idealized version of himself, with a spark of divinity within. Modern art was concerted contemporary society’s version of the Delphic Oracles. Art has a memory of its own. It documents the metamorphosis of mankind. The Industrial Revolution came along in the 19th century. During this time period man was separated from nature, machines ruled the work, and science was a challenge against religion. The underlying message of modern art is uncertainty. Uncertainty is a term used in subtly different ways and in numbers of different fields. This includes physics, philosophy, statistics, economics, finance, insurance, psychology, sociology, engineering, and information science. This applies to the predictions of the future events and to the physical measurements that are already made or even to the unknown. Modern art is a complete break from art of the past and was inspirational to people as well as idealized. Art is the key for changing values. The Tate Modern Exhibit gets about five million visitors in a year. It is misunderstood pieces is a sculpture made of 120 bricks laid out in a rectangle. In Tate, art moves from the margins of the social life to the center. Art is basically praised in this exhibit. The early 20th century was marked by speed and mass production. It feels shallow for many people. Life becomes fragmented. Picasso was a famous artist during this time period. He made art as an antidote to mass culture. In the early 1930’s, Nazism came into force. This was a new political force. Nazism was led by a man named Hitler. He wanted to kill all the Jewish people; therefore he came up with concentration camps. Modern art compared to Nazism is degenerated and impure. With the Nazi regime, no one will be uncertain. In modern life, people now live in doubt. Someone is never sure of one’s true identity. Reality is different, different points of views come together. Nazi Art was a big deal in this time period because of everything that was going on. Hitler stages annual exhibitions of Nazi art. It was radical. The presence clothed in the golden age. Modern art has become an icon for modal goodness. Picasso’s work, “Guernica” is anti-German. It illustrates fractured reality. Cubism fights anything recognizable or rounded. With abstract art, the surface appearance, the look of the world, is left behind. These artists present an experiment, that viewers participate in. it also asks questions and will provide no answers. It is considered to be open-minded. Paul Klee was one of the original creators of abstract art. This type of art tests out modern changes, but no conclusions come out of this. Modern materialists get happiness from the urban environment. It is to a delight in its elegance and shimmer. Piet Mondrian was a modern materialist. His straight lines, rectangles, and flat colo0rs are all in the look of the modern world. He has no living in the material world, but he lives in the immaterial world. He tests the idea that society can be perfected and experiments with searching for purity. The living spaces take on the appearance of a Mondrian painting. People live in the modular homes and have modular experiences, as well as live modular lives. Jackson Pollack and Mark Rothko were abstract expressionists. The abstract expressionists invite the viewers to look into the void. The arts were considered to be outcasts because they wouldn’t accept the values of consumerism. It is unknown what these artists are expressing; an example is they could be telling society off. Usually the artist’s realities attack society’s falseness. The future observers will see uncertain atmospheres, and artists with attitudes, fighting for meaning. Willem de Kooning’s style of art is characterized by a battered compact look. With every stroke of his brush there is a morally fraught one. Mark Rothko’s paintings are a looming void, the edge fuzzy and an incredible vibration of color. Bigness, broadness, and high energy coming at audiences can be something heroic in abstract expressionism, but the morality is relentless. In the 1960s, consumerism is the dominating value among people. People reflect themselves back to themselves through the material objects in life. In the 1950s there was a change from the belief in higher values. Pop Art came about in the 1960s. It represents a change in thinking from the 50s to the 60s. These artists look at their own disillusionment. Andy Warhol was a very famous artist for Pop Art. Pop Art suggests that things and people are thrown away because things keep changing. The Pop Artists wanted to be the opposite of everything that happened in the past. It is a way of describing civilization relating. In the

Trafalgar Square

, there is a statue of a “Modern Woman”, she was born without arms and stubs for legs. This is in the company of British heroes. It is an ironic comment on established values, the values that we no longer believe in. Art expressed aspiration ideals that were slightly unreal in the past. People recognized a better version of themselves. Today things are completely different, people wonder if there really is a better self. Art gave hope to audiences. Art mirrors what people are on the level they are already at. Art is about the impulse, whim, and casualness. Audiences are suspicious of art, it is a mass fascination. China’s economy grows at 10% per year. Chine ahs about 20 of the world’s 30 most polluted cities. China’s art has rushed to embrace Western avant gardism. A 1950s designed factory for making military weapon parts is now an art center. With China’s art, the viewer finds ironic, deadpan, slightly inexplicable human and the same icons and photos that are seen everywhere else in the world. The world is more interconnected with market forces, but everyone still seems less connected with others and with themselves. Traditional images are re-stages top express new global conditions in China. The Chinese experience a loss of identity as they respond to Westernization. People are only what consumers tell them they are. Watteau who was a painter left a message for future art audiences. A painting show the rising elite in an art gallery, one man sneers at nude figures, and a women looks into a mirror instead of at the paintings.

Hockney on Photography
This film describes the career of one of Britain’s greatest pointiest. It tells about his great skill with a camera as his facility with a brush. This man’s name was David Hockney. This film shows his journey of discovery that traces the evolution of his photographic work. He used photography in related media, such as drawing painting, fax art, and photocopying and it is explored in detail. The camera was not invented in the 19th century, just the chemical process was. Painters used the “camera obscura” to create an image to paint from. He discusses the void between the person behind the camera and the subject. He aims to take away the void. He used photographic images to create something more to the condition of painting. Hockney experiments with photgraphy7 over a five-year period in the 1980s. he claims to have made a lot of discoveries, including some about himself. He shows and explains some of his first experiments with Polaroid collages. When he created his Polaroid collages, he carefully examined each print before taking the next picture. He composed the fined product in his mind as he photographs. He uses the Polaroid to create a grid-like collage; later his collages were more free-form and not limited to a grid. He superimposed images over each other. He explains a large photographic collage that features people looking at other people who are looking at a garden. A large version of his photographic collage creates interest because of its perspective of perspective. Hockney fought against the “tyranny” of single-point perspective. The cubists wanted to see an object form all sides simultaneously, he photographs present that same multi-perspective philosophy. Cubism is an acknowledgement that it is only perceptions of reality that are pictures. The Cubist artist’s pictures were the first pictures that actually confused the viewer. When Hockney was a child, he went to the cinema often and came to the conclusion that a different world existed outside of his hometown. He asserts that the camera is not capable of showing grandeur. He plays with different ways of presenting space, which included reverse perspective. In 1985, he does a 20 pages spread for a famous and well-known magazine, Vogue. In this spread he explained the perspective in ways that most people have not considered. He paints a chair for a van Gogh foundation. This chain is similar to the original one painted by van Gogh. This perspective is one gained by walking by a chain and not by standing and looking at the chair. There is not a hierarchy of importance regarding the compositions and objects of his photographs. Everything is supposed to be related to everything else. The fax machine to Hockney represented a machine that is both considered a camera and a printer. People were able to have these in their homes as well. He painted a bouquet of flowers for a friend and he photographed the painted and stands it next to the real bouquet. The real flowers look unreal and the unreal flowers looked real. It was crazy to see that. Most people would think the opposite. The one-point perspective established in the Renaissance limits Hockney. His photography portraits in close-ups are reassembled into a final version. The Grand Canyon is one of the largest of all spaces that people can look into. The concept of edge defines space in this condition. Hockney changed from his Polaroid camera to a 35-mm and others. He has to keep his compositions in his head. He no longer had the same opportunity to examine each photo as he did before when he would examine it then take another photograph. Technology has changed drastically. The cost of reproducing the photographs have changed but what is possible to create in size has changed as well. Hockney photographed the Grand Canyon in 1980. He exhibited his unique, large montages; therefore he decided to paint the Grand Canyon. By painting something he receives the look that he truly wanted. The Grand Canyon has no focal point, it is a huge space. When looking at this, the viewer has to look in all different directions. When he painted his picture, he has to do the same exact thing, which was visual appreciation. When he created his second painting of the Grand Canyon, he used color in this one. His point in doing the Grand Canyon was for the viewer’s eye to be going in all different directions, just like viewing the actual Grand Canyon in person. When Hockney creates his collages, anything would go. He used anything and everything to create his works of art. Hockney was described as “gone hot and cold about photography all his life”; this was said by an art historian. Hockney compares a painting style of his with the art of the Chinese scroll. David Hockney decided to paint Los Angeles. When he did this he showed the city as being very vibrant. He used bright colors, stucco houses, crisp edges, azure skies, and tall palms. Theater is considered to be about illusion, perspective, dreams and beyond, and so much more. Hockney describes how and why he created the painted staging for “Tristan and Isolde”. His talents and interests are so diverse that even he doesn’t know exactly what his next project will be.


3. How do the videos relate to the readings in the text?
The videos relate to the reading in the text because the videos show a picture. With the text the viewer is trying to visualize what is going on and such. I feel like the videos add more depth to the text. A person or viewer is able take the information in better when seeing the films because it is giving such great detail.


4. What is your opinion of the films? How do they add depth to understanding of the readings and art concepts?
My opinion of the films is that they teach me so much more rather than just reading the text. I feel as if the information stays with me. The films add depth to understanding of the readings and art concepts by actually being able to see what went on and the artists and their works. I am a visual learner therefore I feel the films have a greater affect on me rather than just reading the text.