Chosen Artist: Salvador Dalí

Salvador Dalí

Dalí, born in Spain in 1904, he had become the leading surrealist artists of the 20th century. He is most famous for his strange dream like paintings of over exaggerated animal and objects and melting watches and clocks.

Many of his paintings have a very renaissance look to them, and he has been compared to many different renaissance artists in the past, but with his vivid imagination and realistic use of painting techniques he has created some of the best surrealist art pieces of all time. His work consists of different images that come up frequently within his paintings, all holding a different symbolic meaning, for example: He uses the egg in several of his art works, using it to symbolise hope and love; the egg is also symbolised on top of the Salvador Dalí theatre and museum in Spain, where most of the artists work is held, since he died in 1939.

"I am painting pictures which make me die for joy, I am creating with an absolute naturalness, without the slightest aesthetic concern, I am making things that inspire me with a profound emotion and I am trying to paint them honestly." —Salvador Dalí

http://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/165858.Salvador_Dal_

Chosen Artist: Damien Hirst

Damien Hirst

Hirst is the most prominent figure in the group the young british artists. Art collector and entrepreneur he has held exhibitions all over the country including the Tate Modern in London. Using several different medias, some of which were considered very bizarre in the early 90's, Hirst has created some very famous masterpieces that have been displayed around England. His central theme around his work has usually been death. In the early 90's Damien became famous for his series of art installations in which dead animals were suspended in glass cases for the viewers to walk around. Including a sheep and a cow, split in to two so that the viewer could walk in between each case of the animal. His most famous has been the tiger shark encased in a glass case.

His other works include his diamond encrusted skull, which was estimated to be one of the most expensive pieces of art in history. A human skull named: For the Love of God, consisting of 8,601 diamonds and still containing the skulls original teeth, made my Bentley and Skinner, the skull went on exhibition in the White Cube gallery in London in 2007, and estimated to be worth £50Million.

He has also produced a series of paintings called spot paintings. Much like the Pop Art movement of the 1960's Hirst has created his version of repeated polka dot art.

Chosen Artist: Andy Warhol

Andy Warhol

Warhol was one of the leading artists in the art movement known as pop art. Born and raised in America, Warhol started off his art career as a fine art artist, then later moving on to the pop art scene in the 1960's. in 1962 he held his first solo pop art exhibition at Elanore Wards Stable Gallery, viewing his most famous works such as the Marilyn Monroe, 100 dollar bills, 100 soup cans and 100 coca-cola bottles.

Working with mainly silkscreen and paints he created stencils of an object that he then repeats over and over to create his pop art effect.

This is his Coca-Cola art piece, comprising of 100 coke bottles all done by stencil and paint in the 1960's. When asked why he chose to use Coca-Cola as the centre of his work he said: "What's great about this country is that America started the tradition where the richest consumers buy essentially the same things as the poorest. You can be watching TV and see Coca-Cola, and you know that the President drinks Coca-Cola, Liz Taylor drinks Coca-Cola, and just think, you can drink Coca-Cola, too. A Coke is a Coke and no amount of money can get you a better coke than the one the bum on the corner is drinking. All the cokes are the same and all the cokes are good. Liz Taylor knows it, the President knows it, the bum knows it, and you know it."

This is his most recognisable piece of work, he took an image of Marilyn Monroe and changed the colours of her features to create his pop art effect, a technique that has been copied by man different artists and graphic designers ever since. Pop star Madonna also used his technique and recreated her version of a pop art image of her self on the front of her album Celebrations.

http://kottke.org/10/10/andy-warhol-on-coca-cola

Chosen Artist: Baz Luhrmann

Baz Luhrmann

Baz Luhrmann is an australian film director, most recognised for his adaptation of William Shakepeares Romeo + Juliet, Strictly Ballroom and Moulin Rouge. winning several awards for his masterpieces in film, Luhrmann has a certain individual technique when it comes to film making. In his adaptation of Romeo + Juliet, Baz kept the traditional concept of 2 lovers forbidden to fall in love because of their families hatred towards one another, he kept the old style of language used in Shakespeare original play, yet he set in in modern day life in the city of Verona. 

Staring Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes, this dark rendition of the traditional play is probably what he's best known for. He has created scenes that have adjusted to the wording used in the original script but also fit in with the modern day life scenery he has chosen. Along with his film Moulin Rouge he creates a certain bizarre feel to the films with outrageous music and very past paced story lines.

In 2008 Baz released his film Australia, staring Nicole Kidman and High Jackman, a story in which a British Aristocrat travels to Australia to confront her husband of having an affair only to find she is about to inherit a cattle station and has to embark on a journey around the country to try to save it. This is a slightly darker and more down to earth production unlike his previous works.

Chosen Artist: Banksy

Banksy

The artist known as Banksy is a graffiti based artist born out of the Bristol area. Although his identity is still unknown to the public his images are very much well known. spotted all over the country, mainly in London, Banksy produced graffiti art on the side of buildings and public subways using stencils to create images that speak out about the society we live in. 

This is just one example of his funny side to his street art, showing a monkey with a t-shirt indicated that one day they will in fact take over our planet. But a lot of his work shows images protesting for anti-war, anti-capitlist and anti-establishment.

This is one of his famous anti-war art pieces, showing two war soldiers secretly painting a peace sign before someone can see. I think Banksy is trying to send out a message here than even the soldiers of war just want peace rather than constant battles. His other images include a little girl searching a policeman, a young boy behind a snipers back looking excited to see him shoot, two policemen kissing, a man hanging from a window hiding from his lovers husband, and many many more, some of which have sold or up to £40.000 around the world including to people such as kate moss.

Barbera Kruger

Barbara Kruger 

Barbara Kuger is a female american photographer using mainly existing images she has found with aggressive and outspoken text layered over the top. She started her career as a graphic designer when she started to layer images together to produce art that questions her views on feminism, consumerism and classicism. 

This is one of my favourite images of Krugers, I could imagine seeing this image on a greeting card that you would send to a love one, only the background suggests something a lot darker. I think she was trying to highlight some sort of awareness towards depression or some kind of mental illness, yet portraying it in a slightly lighthearted way.

In 2007 Barbara Kruger was asked to produce a set of advertisement boards to be displayed in the Selfridges store in Central London. The phrases she included in this boards were "You want it, you buy it, you forget it" "Its you its new its everything its nothing" and "buy me ill change your life".

Some of the phrases she used seem to be very encouraging on the consumer to purchase items from the store, yet others are just showing that the consumer doesn't need any of the materialistic things they are about to buy. Many people think that Kruger has sold out as an artist by agreeing to create these boards for such a famous expensive store, seeing as for most of her career she has created work to speak out about issues concerning consumerism, but i think she may have done it to pin the joke on to Selfridges, creating almost sarcastic boards for this store to pin up around its different departments to try to entice its customers to buy their products.

Cindy Sherman

Cindy Sherman

Sherman is an american photographer and film director, best known for her controversial portraits. Throughout her career she has sought to produce work that challenges important questions about the media and women in general society. Using herself mainly as her model for he photography she has documented herself in many different images, some disturbing, some provocative but all effective.

When she was asked to produce a set of fairytale images for vanity fair she didn't want to do the usual children's fairytale story, instead she chose to adapt her own concept of a fairytale that hasn't been censored for children viewers yet. She kept a level of gore and violence within her images but not enough to make the photograph a very graphic one.

Another example of her work showing her concerns over women in society is this image. She has created this image as a centre fold for a magazine, just as the provocative images in the male magazines at the time would have, so that when the men open this image expecting a sexy woman spread across the page he is faced with her image depicting women as 'the victims'.

Martha Rosler

Martha Rosler

Rosler is an artists, born in Brooklyn, she works mainly with photography and text. The majority of her work surrounds social issues that affect the world and daily life.

This is a great example of one of her works. Here she has taken the images of the woman taken from a fashion magazine or advert and put them in a stylish flat in the background, til you look closer and notice the scenes of war and death that are happening outside of this seemingly pleasant picture; Along with the sick dying children that are places on the furniture in with the model. I can see clearly the message Martha Rosler is trying to shout out about the fact that the majority of the world are concerned with materialistic things such as the latest phone and nice outfits and while they are looking at these things, people in other parts of the world are in extreme poverty and war. I think the fact she has placed the sick children in the same room as the model and she is only concerned with the phone she is holding is depicting our society as we know it, people aren't concerned with whats happening the other side of the world so long as their happy in their own lives.

Semiotics

Semiotics

Semiotics is the study of signs, in this could also come the study of metaphor, symbolism, significance and communication.
Signs are used all over the world to indicate where or what something is, the best way to explain a semiotic sign is to show one. 

This is a sign to signify a disabled person. If put in the an appropriate place such as a toilet or parking bay, people will know that this is specifically for disabled people. A sign like this is more likely to be used that the words 'Disabled' because an image is universal, no matter what age or race, a person is very likely to understand what this sign will mean.
The study of signs, or semiotics has been around for hundreds of years, the philosopher Charles Sanders Pierce once quoted that "we only think in signs", meaning that the human brain will only understand something when it is in the form of a sign, be in text, image, acts or objects.

This image is the easiest way of describing a semiotic sign. Here we have a drawing of a tree (object), then we have the interpretant (what we know a tree to be), then we have the representment, the word tree.

This applies in most things we come across in our daily lives to help people all over the world to understand the same things.

http://www.brianschrank.com/Intro_to_Media_Studies/resources/semiotics%20for%20beginners/index.html

Modernism and Postmodernism

Modernism and postmodernism 

Modernism was an art movement surrounding the artists, architectures and literature's of the early 1900's, breaking out of the normal traditional art that came around in the late 19th century and kicking off a new wave of art styles. 

one of the most recognisable early modern artists of the 1900's was Picasso, with his expressive use of colours and introduction to cubism, he was one of the many artists to break out of the traditional paintings from before World War 1.

post modernism was another movement breaking through even more of the, now assumed traditional styles of the modern art we had seen in the late 19th century. Now well in to the 20th century saw the turn of the modern styles again, only this time involving music, philosophers and writers. The introduction to punk music and controversial art came the new era known as post modernism.

Damien Hirst was one of the most famous and controversial British artists of the post modernism movement, one of his art pieces shown above of a great one shark suspended in a tank in the Tate.

Indentity

Identity

Your identity is what defines you as an individual human being. Everyone on the planet has their own identity and this can be defined in so many different ways, be it gender, sexuality, racial, religious, race or community. I find a persons identity is surrounded by the way they look and behave, if every body in on earth looked and acted the same way, no one would have a sense of individuality. I feel that subcultures have a huge impact on the identity of a person, for example, back in the 1960's there were a few different subcultures that most people associated themselves in, these mainly being the mods and rockers. The people who defined themselves as a mod came across well dressed and very in to partying and music, where as the rockers came across as trouble makers on their Harley Davis bikes; Each of these categories defined the people within in them by their identity, something that is still present in modern day life. The history of a persons identity has been of much interest to phycologists for centuries, and why identity has been of such importance since the day of dawn. What would life be without our own identities? Certainly a very boring one I can imagine!

Chosen Artist: Tracey Emin

Tracey Emin 

Tracey Emin is one of the more controversial british artists of the 21st Century. Known most famously for her involvement in the Britartists group or the Young British Artists, most of Emin's work surrounds her feminist views portraying herself as the typical "modern day woman". She works with several different medias including film, photography and paintings. 

One of her most famous and most recognised pieces of work was "My Bed", and art instillation consisting of her own un-made bed surrounded by used condoms and blood-stained underwear.