Painting is washed up!

'Painting is washed up! Who will ever do anything better than that propeller?', this is what Mercel Duchamp have said after watching an exhibition of aviation technology. I believed that his sentence combine so many meaning of this modern art. And I just want to look for that meaning of his sentence.

This work is the most famous work of Mercel Duchamp' works. He have presented this work with idea 'Readymade'. Which can think about meaning of 'creating' or 'making'. Creating used to be thing that only human can do, but after industrial revolution, Creating and making was not only belong to human. Factory can make much better objects than human, even camera could made much better realistic image than realistic painters.

Mercel Duchamp used to be painter as well, he just went to America with this painting 'Nude decending a staircase', and he was becoming famous in America. He got involved with Cubism as you can see in his painting. Therefor he was already famous enough in America. His readymade series must be very weird at that time, he could just keep painting this kind of Cubism painting, but he did not.

I strongly believed that he was thinking about visual image of art works are almost impossible to be stronger than what new technology make. Airplane' visual image was huge enough to impress people, and that impression could be much stronger than impression of Cubism painting and other paintings as well.

Ready-made art could be only way to be survive in the modern society what has too many strong images. Interesting idea of work could be new key word what Marcel Duchamp found. Urinal is quite impossible to be beautiful, but when it comes to art and put idea in to that object by artist can make it beautiful. We are watching 'Urinal' in top galleries even that Urinal called 'Fountain' is reproduction works due to destruction of original.

Art make something beautiful that is not totally pretty and beautiful, and giving impression with that process to people. I believe this is what Marcel Duchamp was trying to say with that sentence.

Art work is just art work.

These works are what I made recently, which I called 'Painting series'. I had talked about society in my works before making these works, but I have tried to talk about art and beauty through these works recently with public who would watch my works.

For explaining why I made these works, I need to talk about my earlier work 'Births' which I put above. Actually my works 'Painting series' are starting from argument about my earlier work 'Births' with my friend. I made this work for visual art competition, I needed to talk about 'Love'. And I just bought figure toys to express my idea as my work.

My friend' argument point is very simple. She just told me that 'You need reason to buy that toy even you have idea to make.'. That conversation is just like below.

My friend : So did you have reason to buy that figure toy?

Me : No, I was just walking around market to find something for expressing my idea. And I just found that figure toys.

My friend : You missed point for your art work, you should have reason to buy that toys even you have a idea for art work.

Me : What? So do you have reason to buy acrylic colour and canvas to paint?

My friend : That's different!

This conversation is reason why I started to make my recent works 'Paintings.'

Did I really need reason to use toy?

I was very confused, because it was just she and me in that place. And we could not get any result of that argument at that time. However it didn't take long to make sure that I wasn't wrong. And I thought this argument point could be very good thing to ask people with my work. So I made a decision to use her idea 'Painting stuffs such as acrylic colour and canvas do not need reason to use for art'. So I can use that painting stuff for my art without any reasons same as her thought. This was just kind of making a caricature her idea.

So this is the first plan, called 'Sculpture series'. I was just thinking about sequencing canvases and just calling them sculpture. And that picture above is my plan of 'Sculpture 1&2', but I could not make it due to budget problem.

And theses are 'Painting 1&2'. My idea what I got from conversation had been developed bit, and it was talking about 'any medium and matter of art work is just art work'. So my work becomes bit more about talking 'what is painting?'.

The idea of these work is very simple. I just painted on canvas with glasses cases just like painters choose acrylic colour or oil colour to paint. This is my thinking of 'idea of painting'. Such as painting and sculpture are just sort of category to divide art works bit more easy way. There is noting to be better and worse between all art works.

And these 'Moving painting series' are made with bit more developed idea of mine. Just same question as before, which is 'What is painting?'. These work made me believed in my decision and idea strongly. Painting is not just painted by acrylic and water colour on canvas. It could be everything even just electronic screen with moving graphic. And that is just one of art work.

Off-site show (5) : Exhibition 'Human is abstract.'

We have done our exhibition on 7th of May. It was hard to put all work, but it was also fun to do. A work of group member 'Katrine' was bigger than gallery space door, so we had to break down her word and built them again. It was hard, but we had enjoyed that happening.

And we presented our group film 'Human is abstract.'. Projector was bit broken, image from projector was not have colour what we made. However it looked good, so we just decided to use them. The film was nice things to make balance between our works. I guess it made nice atmosphere of our exhibition.

This is my installation what I did in our show. I just presented a painting, two drawings and two films on one surface of the wall. My purpose was that people watch my film on laptop after watching my whole works as the last view. I think that was good choice for my installation. 

And, we all think show was better than we expected even we could not do all what we wanted. It was nice try with all my exhibition group. 

Off-site show (4) : Reproduction of early works 'Faceless'

My work project 'Faceless' were just graphic images and small drawing on a paper. Work project 'Faceless' have never been presented on real place, so I needed to reproduce my work 'Faceless' to present in dog-house.

Dog-house is obviously fancy place to plan events, but it was not common place for art exhibition. So I just thought that common form of art work would not be matched. I believed that something feels like vintage stuff is the best one for this gallery place.

Calico was material I found to print my images. Calico is one kind of fabric, which is very cheap. And it looks very antique. I just printed with transfer paper on calico, and it was better than I expected. 

And this is one painting what I painted, I just used my old painting as recycling to made vintage feeling. I just wanted to reproduce 'Faceless' project for Dog-house place was my purpose, and I believe this recycling painting is better way to present my illustration than just drawing on new white canvas.

Off-site show (3) : My works what I have prepared for our show.

Before making group, I wanted to try breaking atmosphere of traditional gallery place with my recent works. This is because my recent work have tendency to break traditional form of painting. So I just wanted to put my works on traditional white gallery.




This kind of works is reason why I just join to gallery group, but this works were not suitable for our group plan. We were planning to talk about human mind in show, but this works are totally not to talk about human mind. So I decided not to use this new works of mine.

Then, I decided to use my early works, called 'Faceless'. I was talking about face reaction of us with this works. I thought this works are better to talk about human mind than my recent work. I have few film works and graphic images. There is not real work such as painting or something. So I needed to think about how I can present this works in dog-house which we are going to exhibit out show.

Off-site show (2) : Beginning of making plan for show with group members.

Me, Katrine and Karen were members of our group, we had a look at dog-house again and tried to plan our exhibition seriously. Three of us are international student, so it took a time to understand each others, but it was fun to make a plan together in many wrong English. The first meeting of our group was just chatting up and bit serous talking about art and own cultures.

The second meeting as three, we discussed about our show in school. And we realized that we three all are talking about human in our works. Karen' works usually show the human' daily life, Katrine are usually talking about emotion of human, and I think i'm usually talking about the public. So we made a decision to use human emotion as our theme of off-site exhibition.

Then third meeting in school again, we made our title of show, 'Human is abstract.'. The title was very open to combine our all ideas. We all agreed this title is good to combine with our very different own ideas of human mind.

I just made this poster after third meeting. Karen and Katrine liked to use it, so we made a decision to use this poster for our show together. This is all we have done in the beginning of planning for show.

Off-site show (1) : the first and the second group meeting for off-site show

After dividing group, around 8 people in our tutor group were trying to plan to show as an gallery group. In the first meeting, we went to 'Dog-house' which is near by Kennington. Dog-house was fancy place to exhibit, very bright and nice facilities.

The most interesting thing was a huge screen which is possible to put film on. I thought this screen is the best place for group film work. And opposite side of huge screen have an TV, I believed these two electronic displace things will make nice group show atmosphere. 

However we all feel that 8 people are quite too many for this place. In the second meeting, we made a decision to divide group, and I was making a group with Karen and Katrine.

What is beauty? - beauty of artist.

Why do we know Pablo Picasso and Andy Warhol even there were more than thousand artists in the same period they lived? People who do not study art even know them as great artists. Beauty of society was bit fine to think about, but beauty of artist, this is really my unsolved answer of question and personal opinion. 

The last post 'beauty of society' is written for showing that each societies have had different beauty standards. Actually I feel bit clear about 'Beauty of society', but I'm really not sure about 'beauty of artists.'. The questions simple, Does artist make new 'beauty of society' or just follow 'beauty of society' society made?. 

Paintings by Piet Mondrian. We can see process of his painting getting simpler. In the same period of he lived, many of painters tried to make new form of painting. And mostly painters start to break real object down and make them simple. Also Pablo Picasso has done this kind of process as well, and he invented cubism.

I believe camera was the most important thing caused huge changing of art especially painting. Before human have camera, there is no way to save visual image except painting. Rolling class want to keep their portraits, so they had to be in front of painter to get painted their portraits by painters. However, camera which can make much more realistic portraits, and that was much more faster than painter.

Demand for painting has a rapidly decrease, and a huge wind of change was blowing through the art world. I guess there are two ways to have process what artists have done. The first, artists were trying to be different from camera for demand of societies. The second, artists had desire to break traditional form, and they did it when rolling class focused on camera which was very interesting new medium.

I think the first way is more about following beauty of society. And the second is more about following desire of artists. I just realize something now when I just write this sentence. Following beauty of society and following desire of artist are making new beauty, both of them try to make new beauty. When public feel interesting about something new, that will be new beauty of society. And artists are public as well.

Artists are one part of society trying to make beauty. All people in societies are making beauty such as scientists, singers, office worker and even street booth worker. The all people called public include artists are making new candidates of beauties and choosing new beauty of society.

It does not matter printer print visual image by human control or just random system. If that was beautiful, public would choose that as new beauty of society. And that public is also including artists.

What is beauty? - beauty of society.

Beauty, which feel like being really close to us who is involved visual art. How people can feel beautiful or how can people see beautiful were my huge question after studying little bit of aesthetics and art histories. I can feel there are lots of way to have beautiful emotions, so I just want to try to understand about way to feel beautiful, having beautiful emotions or things whatever about beauty.

This is the venus of willendorf(4.25inch), made between 28000 and 25000 BCE. It was founded in 1908, near village 'willendorf in lower Austria. I think this is good thing to start to talk about beauty. Ancient art's beauty is usually set by need and desire. Ancient needed food and manpower. This two desires would able to be solved by childbirth, so breast and hips which represent childbirth were the most important part for beauty. Therefore, hand, arm and face which do not relate to childbirth were almost disappear.

The most interesting point is face is skipped as well. It could mean face was nothing important at all even face is important point for human beauty in this age. This show each age, society or group could have totally different beauty point. And beautiful point can be everything, even somethings have been felt disgusting could be beautiful for someone or some society.

I can not sure about this small status was made to show beauty for that society, but I am sure about it showed beauty of that society is much more possible. This is because even one small child' drawing was tended to be beautiful. I believe art tend to aim an ideal for society or group. Age when religion was the most important, art described The Bible, The Buddhist scriptures and The Koran. Religion was the most important in that kind of age. In this way, most of art has been displayed beauty of society. In this way, the point human feel beauty can be background of object such as idea, religion and legend. Or It can be just simple part of visual looking.

This is an old painting of korean painter 'yun-bok shin', called 'Portrait of a Beauty'. This painting shows beautiful girl of 18 centuries' korean girl, but I am quite sure all korean won't feel she is beautiful, only based on looking. However I am feeling beautiful from this painting, because it is classic. The idea 'this painting shows beautiful girl of 18 centuries korean girl.' makes me thinking this is cool and beautiful with this normal looking girl.

The way of my thinking, the classic caused me feel cool from this painting is also change able just like I do not feel beautiful from looking of girl in the painting. Some previous ages were ignoring historical things. If I was living that kind of society, this painting would be just not ugly painting was meant to paint beautiful girl. 

It does not mean all ages have specific ideal beauty, It does mean ideal beauty of society is very changeable. And it is not only based on visual looking. 

This is what I have been studying about beauty of society.