Diary one
Mark Rothko, Untitled, 1968
This painting was created by Mark Rothko (1903-1970), who is a famous
abstractionist from America. He was originally born in Russia and he moved to
America in 1910. He was impoverished in his early ages hence he took part-time
job for paying his tuition. He used to be actor, reporter, waiter, teacher and
painter. Because of his tough life, he started taking drug and drinking in
order to ease his pressure and depression. And finally he committed suicide in
1970.
Even though Mark Rothko’s life was not easy and full of difficulties and
failures, he still became a very successful painter. He was a wise man. He
tried to express philosophy thinking through abstract painter. Most of his
works are impressive and debatable. He always used the color, structure, shape especially in rectangle and
layers to present his works. This became the personal style and also as a
breakthrough in the history of abstractionism painting.
Why do I choose his work? It is because his painting was introduced in
the class of Creative media studio. I found that
Mark’s painting were very interesting as most of them were painted in simple
color and composed by several rectangular shapes which made his works special.
When I saw his painting I can think of Yves Klein’s art work introduced in the tutorial
class. His Blue Monochrome was
painted in single color which is even simpler than Mark’s one.
The painting shown above was painted by
oil color and had no title with it. Mark said that he wanted to use the simple
expression to present the complex thought. So he was not confined by
complicated line and composition. Alternatively, he liked to use the most
simply and easy way to show what he was thinking. I remember that in the
lecture of the science of art, we learned how people eyes brain work when they
see, touch, taste and smell. Interestingly people’s brain react almost the same
when they see something that defined as ‘beautiful’ or ‘ugly’. In secondary
school, I learned about cold color (e. g blue) and warm color (e. g red) in
visual art lesson. I don’t know why it works but I believe that it is also
relating to how our brains operate. The painting above is mainly painted in gray,
purple and red. We can feel the darkness, depression and despair. The color
created an atmosphere of pressure and fear. The reason why I have such kind of
feeling about this painting is because the dark and gray colors usually
represent the negative emotion in our mind. Mark’s bad experience led him to
the way of destruction, we can see this in his drawing. Besides, his works are
also relating to space, although his drawing has no perspective. As the drawing
is very big, if audience looks closely into it, they can imagine that they are
a part of the painting. On the other hand, there is a question haunting me:
whether should I describe these rectangular shapes in the painting as empty or
full?
Mark’s paintings always give
me space of imagination, the visual effect of his works are also wonderful too.
When you look at his works you can feel the emotion immediately and directly. This’s
why I love them so much.
Diary two
9evenings: theatre and engineering
Open score
The Open Score is a
documentary film taken by Robert Rauschenberg showing the series event of
9Evenings: theatre and engineering which held in 1966 at the New York 69th
Regiment Armory by 10 New York artist including Robert Rauschenberg. This event
was about diverse art performance such as music, dance, theatre etc. in the 1960s
and some of the performance were mixed up with the advanced technology at that
time. For instance, wireless, infrared camera and FM transmitter were not yet
the common technology that applied in the daily life in that age. More
importantly, it was a very first time for artists and scientists and engineers
collaborated and cooperated together working in the same purposes. They worked
over 10 months to construct technological equipment and system that were used
in art performance. It was a remarkable moment that artist combined technology
with their art works—led to the generation of new media art.
Robert Rauschenberg recorded
this historical moment by using his camera and then titled it as Open Score. He
divided the video into three parts, each part represent one event. The first
one is a tennis match between two players; the interesting thing is that the
focus point of the match is not the match itself, but the two players and the
rackets they used to play the game. The rackets were installed an electronic
bell which could detect vibration from hitting the ball and then produce huge
bang sound. Therefore, when they played the game, it just liked playing music.
Also, the installation on the rackets could transmit signal to a receiver. So
every time the ball hit, one of the lights in the court would be switched off.
Finally, the court became totally dark. This experimental art combined elements
of music, dance (movement of two players) and technology.
The second part and the third
part were both performed on stage. There were more than 500 people invited to
stand on the big stage where had a darkness environment, listened to Robert’s
command, and did the thing that they were told to do. The whole process would
be taken by an infrared camera.
I only know Robert
Rauschenberg recently in the class of creative media studio and now he becomes
one of my favorite artists. He innovated ‘combine painting’ which mix up
painting and sculpture. He made a lot of contribution in contemporary art. This
set of video is not just showing the combination of science and art, but also
the achievement of Robert Rauschenberg.
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