I am not a human, I am a representation of a human

One of the greatest art pieces ever, in my mind at least, La trahison des images or The Treachery of Images. It was painted by Belgian Surrealist painter René Magritte in 1929. It is probably one of the most mind blowing, head exploding paintings in the world because of it's clever and witty logic. People have mentioned it in many books and even in the Simpson's they used the logic to humor people. The image below is the painting I was talking about.

As you can see in the bottom it has writing. In literal translation from French to English it says "This is not a pipe". Crazy don't you thing, your first impression is "Yes it is!!! It is a pipe!!!" But really it's "A painting of a pipe." not a literal pipe so therefore the writing is correct. Weird how the human's first reaction is "That's a pipe." but really in correct grammar it is a painting of a pipe. But then it makes me think... If I looked at a "building" then wouldn't it be instead "My vision of the building" because partially blind people see it in a different way and it is not the same thing. Well maybe I'm thinking way to deeply but I also notice that I phrase it incorrectly it should be "A digital image of a painting of a pipe.". I hope this makes you view the world in a different way.
If you wish to see more art by René Magritte go to:
http://www.magritte.com/

Artist Interview

Well just this evening I went to the Ray at Night Art walk, every is 2nd Saturday of the month which is locarted at North Park in the city of San Diego, and i interviewed an artist by the name of Joel Sharp. For more information go to http://www.rayatnightartwalk.com/. He does quite a lot of styles because as he says "I tend to get a little bored if I stick with one type of art.", which is the reason i chose him because I don't like to stick with just one either. Here are the list of questions and answers.

Interview questions

1.What inspired you to become an artist?
A: I was born as an artist. It was pretty much the only thing I could do that I was good at. When I was in second grade I noticed that I was, not to brag or anything, much better then the other students.

2.In your art what do you try to convey?
A: I try not to convey anything in my art, no political views, no point really. Like when I draw an abstract, I try to draw with not intention but when people look at it they see something else and then it pretty much becomes a general audiences perception.

3.How do you keep with modern art trends while still keeping with your own style?
A: I really don't follow trends much, when I grab a modern art magazine I really don't follow what other artists try convey. I do what I feel is right and I don't feel that it should be anything that the other artists do.

4.How do you keep with your own style while trying to satisfy other people’s artistic needs? Also how do you choose which artists to show in your galleries?
A: Well when I choose artists that go into my gallery, their art has to follow a certain aesthetic, like if most of the art is beautiful the other artists art must be beautiful as well. Well for peoples artistic needs, I am sort of the person who will paint literally what the costumer would want but I will not copy other artists art if they asked me to.

5.I see that you do different types of art; do you think that you keep one certain style within the different types of art you do?
A:Well...people say that they could see a thread within my art that identifies it as my work. Though personally, I don't see such a thread in any of my works. I tend to get a little bored if I stick with one type of art.

6.What do you think is the toughest challenge of being an artist?
A:Surviving, paying the bills. Trying to sell art. That's all I can pretty much say.

7.I have 3 art pieces that are possible paintings that I want to paint, can you critique them for me?
A:These pieces are very good but it all depends on the pallet you use. What i see with a lot of new artists is that they use the paint right out of the tube and not try to mix any of the colors to make a little more interesting, if not it looks a little mediocre. For example if your painting is a little earthy then you would want to mix the brown with the green or vice versa.

8.What tips would you give for someone who was going to paint for their first time?
A:Well i find that a little hypocritical because there should be no boundaries for an artist because there is no boundaries for art. I've had friends who pursued art classes in college and they said that it ruined them as an artist. So do what you feel is right.

Cool huh? Well I think i know which art piece i want to paint but you never know.

Until next time,

-Alec

Just an update...on art

Well it's been a couple of weeks now since I have studied about art, embraced it's beauty with both arms. Today feel like reflecting on it all, what I've learned so far in this mysterious yet intriguing art world. Well I guess to start if off is art is something that of a feeling, inspiration, an idea, a controversy, or to sum it all up an intention. Of course, there is always dadaism which, at one point, tried to make anti-art(you can look in my other blogs to know more about it) but failed. When the intention is created the color is needed in the process of making the art. Color is one part of showing the intention, for example having and dirty red could mean anger or rage to the point of arrogance or have a purplish blue to have sort of a relaxing feeling when you look at it. The color is the most important of all the aspects and without it, it really wouldn't be art at all. Then comes the type of art that you do, it could be abstract, Surrealism, Romanticism, Cubism, etc. This part of the art is one where you have almost little or no choice because these types of art express 1 or 2 main idea's and most likely your intention will fall into one of these types. When you have all these mixed together it makes art or at least my perspective of art. Of course one could say that art is only meant for beauty, or an expression of feelings, but really art is what you make it to be and no one else can change that.

-Alec

Capture the feeling....The Great Depression

I notice that in my past blogs that I have been doing a lot about the beauty of painting so I decided to do the beauty and emotion of photography of the Great Depression. The Great Depression started right after the "Roaring 20's" as they called it, the exact date is October 29, 1929 also known as "Black Tuesday". This was huge all over across America and brought everything down; taxes, personal income, prices and profits. No one could do anything about it because no one had money. Farmers and miners even had it worse because of the conditions of the weather that they were having a hard time doing anything at all epsecially with Dust Bowls in action( Dust Storms would arise in random times and they would literally rip out the crops that the farmers). People from other states especially Oklahoma started to migrate to California in search of work, of course it wasn't much better in California but people were desperate and California had somewhat of jobs that people could get at least something. ONe of the Many photographers that captured the hopelessness that these people felt was Dorothea Lange, who was very famous for her shot of Migrant Mother, which shows a picture of a mother thinking endlessly about something while the 2 of her 7 children rest on her shoulders but your not quite sure what which is the real beauty of this picture.

Thinking Beyond Conscious Mind... Surrealism

It is said that Surrealism branched off of Dada, which you can see in my previous blog, and it is very much true. Although this time it the art had some what of a beauty to and meaning to the art it still had a very bizarre taste. The Surrealists were very anti- war just like Dadaists but also were anti-modern, meaning that they did not like the modern world and what it was becoming and wanted it to be more of man and nature not man and technology. Surrealists believed that they could create art within a subconscious state and without the intention of logical comprehensibility, in other words the artists had no idea what they were doing while they were painting. The founder of Surrealism is Andre Breton and the philosophy of Surrealism was officially created in 1924 with a majority of the artists coming for Dadaism. On an interesting note Surrealism aligned with the theories of Communism and anarchism. Why? Who knows but if you look at this quote from the most famous Surrealist artist, Salvador Dali, it does seem to make it all better "There is only one difference between a madman and me. I am not mad."

If you are interested about the Surrealist artists and their works:
http://www.surrealism.org/

Until I post again,

Tkoto

A really remarkable painting by Salvador Dali.

"The Ship"

Thinking without that box...Dadaism

Probably one of the more bizarre arts....OK very bizarre arts and started right after the end of the first World War. Some artists were were against the barbarism of WWI and thought that the war was completely pointless.So in response they decided to make a movement called dadaism. The really bizarre thing was, the Artist called Dada Art "Anti-Art" and was suppose to be the complete opposite of art. When art was traditionally suppose to hold beauty, Dada did not care about beauty. When art held meaning, Dada did not have meaning, it was not suppose to have meaning to it and the artists strive to do this. These Dada artists wanted offend people who loved art and to crush art itself. Of course it was unsuccessful on both accounts because 1. Some people actually enjoyed the art and 2. It became an art movement in which most people are sure the artists said "BLOODY HELL!". If you still want to know more about Dada Art, check out this site:

http://www.museum-online.ru/en/Epoch/Dadaism/

If you are interested in what Dada art looks like:

http://www.artcyclopedia.com/history/dada.html

(Batman Theme Song) Gericault!!!

Well i'm here right now working on important business type stuff (homework) and i found Theodore Gericault interesting sort of not really biography.

In 1791 he was born Rouen, France but went to school in Paris. He was a classmate of Delacroix, one of the greatest French Romanticist painters ever, both in the Lycée Louis-le-Grand and at the Beaux-Arts where he studied with Vernet and Guerin. In 1812, he attracted a lot of attention with one of his soon to be masterpieces Officier de Chasseurs a Cheval, a heroic man wearing a beautifully ornamented uniform on a powerful white horse. Two Years later he shows yet another one containing a soldier and horse but this time the horse being a very tar blackish brown and both seem to be very scared. Gericault loved horses and soldiers so much that for a Hundred Days he decided to join the Musketeers to follow the King to Bethune. He eagerly return to once again to continue his artwork and created Course des Chevaux Libres which this did not have soldiers but still had horses in them. One of His Last Masterpieces the Radeau De La Meduse or The Raft of the Medusa was one that showed his zealous and scientific study of the human form.....and there were no horses. sadly He died at a very young age in 1824 which he was only thirty-three.

"Til Next time peoples.

Oh yeah and RAFT OF MEDUSA!!!

I think 2 masterpieces in the works, not a picasso though...

Well today i had just finished up one that i liked very much and on that same period at school drew another one but with a totally different style. This is my first one that i like very much and very much proud of it because of it's ingeniousness, not to brag.
Although i did get a critique saying that i should stop of where i am and not finish drawing on the bottom(cough coughmyteachercough cough) i really do think that i should finish up the bottom. At first sight many people would think that the man is standing on a tree trunk, but really this is an abstract drawing and can also be view as a whale. Bet you didn't see that coming? Or maybe you saw the whale first and then realized it was a tree trunk? Or maybe you couldn't decide between the 2 and cursed the artist who drew this? Why not comment back on how you think of this painting.


As you can clearly there is a big difference between the styles of these to sketches, this one is much more complex then the other one. I was just sitting on my desk thinking about what i wanted to draw next and then i just decided to let my hand go free. Once again i wanted the arrows to cover the whole thing but i was then told that there was a rule of where if i kept 2 parts of the drawing somewhat blank it is more appealing to the eye.

Feedback to these drawings would be very nice and helpful.

Until Next time!

Industra-What?The Great War!!

Well well, my brothas(as my teacher would say at school), we learned quite a lot about how the Industrial Revolution effected the first World War. To start if off The IR(Industrial Revolution), which really started around the late 1800's, is a time when factories and machinery were being made. Inventions like the Cotton Gin and steam powered engines were being invented and made production of a lot of item a lot quicker.This in the face of it made thousands of people lose their old jobs and forced them to work in the factories. This not only included the "man of the house" or "Alpha Male" (or however you want to call it), but the whole family too. It was really quite said because whole cities would like a black dot from space because of how much smog there was from the factories. Amongst these huge varieties of items being massed produced included heavy artillery for wars. Nobody has really used heavy artillery in wars before because it had been quite peaceful for awhile. That is until political junkies decided to shoot a governor of some country and then a war broke out. Back then wars were meant to shoot for pride with muskets and swords and you would only get one shot until you had to reload. But with Machine guns, grenades and biological warfare, you better hope that you were in a trench(pretty much tunnels where soldiers hid in and prayed for their lives while the enemy shot). Quite a crazy thing huh? Well if your more interested about the IR then go to http://www.yale.edu/ynhti/curriculum/units/1981/2/81.02.06.x.html
or if the Industrial Revolution bored the hell out of you and you could care less about and want to know more about the violence(World War 1) got to
http://www.historyworld.net/wrldhis/PlainTextHistories.asp?historyid=aa01

Artists

Well i was thinking quite hard on what i wanted to study a little more about in the Art world, and for a while i made everything feel so complex. But then i saw Pablo PIcasso's Cubist Paintings and i knew that this man was a great Cubist Artist. Just the Complexity and the thought process of making the painting is quite genius. For Example take his Painting The Guitar Player:

What i like about it so much is that fact that it acts sort of like a puzzle, you have to try and find traces of the guitar player. What is also great about this painting is if you don't try to find the guitar player it still looks really beautiful and i think that was Pablo Picasso's intention. Also you can sort of visualize it like vast amounts of stairs that go to nowhere.

I'm also very much fascinated by Theodore Gericault and Caspar David Friedrich.

Neo Classical Art

These are probably my most favorite of all genres because of the way it displays the lighting in the paintings, the supernatural aura that the painting brings to the audience and the choice of color, which can say a lot about the person in the painting. Although some paintings can be overly dramatic it brings the feel of what it would have been like at that very moment. For those of you who do not know what Neo-Classical Art is, today is your lucky day. Neo-Classical style started around the 1700 when the Rococo style period was at end. Since Rococo was very much lavish and comforting, the Neo-Classical art was much more logical, mellow and somewhat was influenced on what was happening at the time and, in some cases, vice versa. With a lot of the Neo-Classical Art you will see that it goes back to the Roman age or even older, but each painting had something political in it. A very famous painting that is Neo-Classical is The Oath of the Horatii by Jacques Louis David which you can see below.



When this painting was first seen by the audience, it had immediate approval of the audience. They called David a genius artist and said that it showed courage, valour and to stand up for what's right for the people. The French coined this as an influence to the French revolution and still keep it up today. I very much like this painting because of the art "magic tricks" the painting has. As you can see the focus point is swords and the man blocking the swords with nothing but branches. This to me showed that even if you have nothing you can still defend against a superior enemy. You can tell with the the lighter colors that the light is coming from the left side. Also the dark shading in the back to trick you into think it is far away.There is still some tricks i have not mentioned but i can't remember them from the top of my head. Maybe next time i will have my notes from the 9th grade. But anyways to summarize the 3 tricks i have just mentioned are: the focus point, the light shading, and the blue haze. Until next time.

-Alec

Welcome!!

To my new blog, and a new subject. For the record my name is Alec Garcia and I go to High Tech High and I am a sophomore currently working on a new project about the Industrial Revolution and the art that was made during the era. I am a soccer fanatic so I will always try to incorporate soccer into all my subjects. The purpose of this blog is to reflect on what i learned on the Industrial Revolution and to share interesting facts and info that I find in my studies. We will be making art pieces that are influenced by the Industrial revolutions and using chemistry to make the paint that we will use. I will most likely post my rough drafts of my art ideas, to get feedback from my peers. Don't be shy to comment on my blogs, actually i want anyone who reads my blogs, not to by shy.