Andy Warhol- 15 Minutes Eternal

Andy Warhol is someone I thought I am familiar with. But actually, I am just hypnotizing myself. After I went to the art exhibition ‘Andy Warhol- 15 Minutes Eternal’ held in Hong Kong Museum of Art, I realized Andy Warhol in fact went beyond Campbell soup and Marilyn Monroe.

I was quite surprised to see his early work. Most of his work were composed by simple lines and detailed record of the objects’ real sizes. I went there with my friends and luckily, we followed a docent leading a group of students so that we could learn more about Warhol’s work. His early works were mainly shoes designs and angels’ portraits. Warhol did think art can make a living as he put art in real designs. The shoes in the paintings were things that really can be made. The sizes and heights of the heels were designed carefully.

However, the angels’ portraits caught more of my attention. There was a series of them and most the angels were naked doing sex. In the portraits, they were doing sex pleasurably and freely as their eyes showed no care of the others. The blotted line used to outline the angels makes them a bit unrealistic as they are not continues. They seemed to be really in the heaven though there is no background in the picture. It is also very special to see western-style angels drawn on folding screen, which is orientated in China. Blotted lines form two symmetrically identical angels but with different patterns on their wings. Yet, I could hardy identify which was male and female in the painting since the sex organs were not drawn. I think this unclear definition indicates that Warhol’s sexual orientation. He was not quite sure about it. However, this initiates him to be more creative and bold in his design.

In fact, I most appreciate Warhol’s self portraits as they were very iconic and fully showed his confidence to his talent. He was very modern to take self portraits by taking them in motion and style them with different effects. He as an artist was very eager to show different disposition of himself and his narcissism. To the others who don’t know Warhol, the portraits were totally nonsense. But his charms in the portraits make people want to know him and make people don’t think that he was showing off. This is his success. The strong contrast of each picture in the grid photos gives impulses to audiences. We might think that it is very easy to make this kind of photos with some applications in phones. However, it is Warhol to create this kind of playthings.

However, I am not quite sure about what was Warhol’s movie doing. The hall kept playing his famous film Empire and Eat. I had a glance of the movie and there were no one inside the little theater. I think that was absolutely normal as his movies were just too long in length. I wonder how many audiences would watch the whole movie! His movie was very artistic like in Empire, it captured its change from day to night in detail. But the market value of the movie was very low as it challenges the patience of the audience. Warhol once said Art is business, Business is art. I think his movie productions was just oppose what he believed. The movie was famous just because of its length. I suggest Warhol should fast forward the original film as the final movie. It is more interesting to see people passing through the Empire State Building and day changes to night very quickly. The changes will be more obvious as well.

My favorite part of the exhibition was The Silver Cloud. It was hard to find any interactive part in the art exhibitions of most famous artists. It is in our mind that we must not touch the work. The security guard would warn you even you just have one step closer to the art work. In the room, I could try to experience the origin idea of creating from Warhol. It was very great to have such an exchange of experiences using real objects but not just by paintings or books with a famous artist. I enjoyed watching the ‘clouds’ rose from low to high. The color silver makes me felt like I was in fantasy and having party. But there were too many people (especially children, who made the pillows leaked air) inside the room so that the place was not that relaxing as Warhol expected his guests to feel. Instead, I felt lively and cheerful. That’s a good experience too.

Warhol turned every daily-use objects into art and that is why he was so amazing. To him, art is everywhere and it worth a lot. ‘Pop art is for everyone.’

Syrian Museum - matisse

Syrian Museum - matisse

Syrian artist Tammam Azzam’s ‘Syrian Museum’ presents a series of masterpieces by painters such as Leonardo da Vinci, Henri Matisse, Goya and Picasso superimposed unto the Syria’s devastated landscapes. This is the piece 'The Dance' by Matisse originally. The painting was combined with a scene from Syria using digital technology. The work was shared the picture on Azzam's Facebook page. It extends a political commentary on the upheavals in their homeland that have led to the Syrian Uprising and the subsequent destruction and violence.

The Dance (I)

The Dance (I) In March 1909 Matisse painted a preliminary version of this work, known as Dance (I) It was a compositional study and uses paler colors and less detail.^[3] The painting was highly regarded by the artist who once called it "the overpowering climax of luminosity"; it is also featured in the background of Matisse's La Danse with Nasturtiums (1912).

It was donated by Nelson A. Rockefeller in honor of Alfred H. Barr, Jr. to the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

The Dance series is commonly compared to a William Blake watercolour, entitled Oberon, Titania and Puck with fairies dancing which had come around years earlier in 1786. It is not known whether Matisse ever saw this original painting or if it was the inspiration for his own works, but there is at least obvious similarities in their subjects, with a similar setup of dancing figures in a personal and charming display of emotion and happiness. Considering the length of art history and the broad knowledge which exists right across Europe, it is virtually inevitable that any painting will have had a similar one preceding it, so the similarities cannot alone be confirmation of influence upon Matisse some 130 years later.

Dance, above, was the second of the two paintings by Matisse, coming in 1910 and measuring 260 cm x 391 cm (102.4 in x 153.9 in). It is now stored in the The Hermitage in St. Petersburg due to the influence of a prominent Russian art buyer around the time of Matisse's life who was a massive supporter of his work and bought many of his most famous paintings after seeing ability which others seemingly could not. It is always highly surprising in the modern era to see how much this artist struggled for academic acceptance when there is clearly so much quality within so many of his paintings.

Source: 

http://matissethedance.com/                

http://www.artnet.com/galleries/exhibitions.asp?gid=425102113&cid=284845

http://au.artshub.com/au/news-article/news/visual-arts/%E2%c3%83%c6%92%c3%86%e2%80%99%c3%83%e2%80%9a%c3%82%c2%af%c3%83%c6%92%c3%a2%e2%82%ac%c5%a1%c3%83%e2%80%9a%c3%82%c2%bf%c3%83%c6%92%c3%a2%e2%82%ac%c5%a1%c3%83%e2%80%9a%c3%82%c2%bd%c3%83%c6%92%c3%86%e2%80%99%c3%83%e2%80%9a%c3%82%c2%af%c3%83%c6%92%c3%a2%e2%82%ac%c5%a1%c3%83%e2%80%9a%c3%82%c2%bf%c3%83%c6%92%c3%a2%e2%82%ac%c5%a1%c3%83%e2%80%9a%c3%82%c2%bdsyrian-museum-series-goes-viral-194028
burgessart.wordpress.comhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dance_(Matisse)

Song Dong 36 Calendars

This is a very interesting project and there were a lot to see in the exhibition. I think what Song Dong get inspired for this project, which is his daughter’s color book, is really great. That’s because the color books were something I familiar with and that’s why I was impetuous to color his paintings. There are only light graphic lines to form every picture in each calendar. Although they are just pencil drawing, the pictures were drawn in detail. They look like photographs which are usually put in real calendars. Song Dong was not trying to paint something abstract. He just wanted to record something important happened in his life, including some personal events as well as the historical ones. He is quite is ‘realism’ artist in this project.

Besides, with the descriptions written underneath each picture, it was easier for us to understand what event he was trying to record and more importantly, his feelings. He spent quite a lot of time to flip over the history and pick something that really affects China and the world to record. This was never an easy job.

Different calendar inspired people in different degree. Although some of them were Song Dong’s personal events, I was inspired by them as some of them were really touching. Like the one above, it recorded his life after his mother’s death. He said he always cried awake and his hair started to fall. He thought that’s because his mother was thinking of him. Each time she thought she would bring one away. However, he would feel thankful instead of angry when people ask him about his hair. This reminded him that he was thought by his mother. This piece nearly moved me into tears as I remembered that he was in a very good relationship with his mother. In the year 1983, his family went picnic in a park and his mum insisted to leave all the oranges to Song Dong. His mum always left the best to her kids. She demonstrated what sacrifice was. I immediately think of my mum when I saw Song’s work. She was that great as Song's mum.

I really appreciate the idea of inviting 400 public to edit Song’s work freely. Other than promoting the exhibition, the activity can also encourage the public to be creative and the idea of “making our own calendars” can be spread. It was fascinating to see the public’s works which add lots of colors to the exhibition. I think they were even more eye-catching than Song’s work as the productions of each participant were very different. There were mainly two parts that they can edit and they are the “calendar” part and the “picture” part.

In terms of color, some participants only use one color while some use many colors to edit Song’s work. To some extend, color reflects the emotion of a person. I personally appreciate the following creation most though her pessimistic worried me. She first acted as a student to do assignment. She wrote four short stories and one line on each day. She was creative but her message was not wanting to compromise with the world anymore and her attitude was negative. Then, she acted as a teacher to mark her work, giving grade C-. However, she gave an A+++ for her comment as a teacher writing ‘not to give up and your memory is not something wrong’. The words were all in red. I was really shocked and I wonder what have this creator experienced, causing her that depressed. It was a shame that the name tag of the work did not include the age of the creator.

Next, the effect of the tools used for the public creation was prominent. The organizer provided the participants with water color, pencils and rubbers. Water color is easy to use even for young kids. Rubbers provide a great space for them to exert creativity. They could use rubbers to rub away the parts they didn't like. Also, the rubber scrap could be a part of the creation which made the creation to become a three-dimensional creation. The scrap in the creation on the left makes the work rough. The creator seemed not wanting to recall any memories.

At last, in terms of the principles of design, most people wrote down very personal feelings and marked the date which was their personal events like the birthday of someone or holidays. That’s why I think it was very clever for Song Dong to say that this is the start of the project. I think the participants as well as those who have visited would have thought of creating their own calendars or diaries with sketches. To me, everyone can draw and skills can be improved through practice. Thus, I think this is a good start for everyone to record their lives and emotions. The principles of design of the public works were varied yet they were mainly inspired by daily lives.

All in all, I enjoy the part of public creation more than the original part of Song Dong. Maybe there were more colors and the ideas of the participants varied more instead of mainly recording the facts. That’s why human are precious as they have thinking and emotions.

Tammam Azzam

Bio

Born in Damascus in 1980, Tammam Azzam lives and works in Dubai. Mr. Azzam, who was born in Damascus, has been living in Dubai since he and his family fled Syria with the help of his gallery in September 2011, seven months after the start of the uprising there. He is one of about two dozen artists who have escaped Syria with the help of the Ayyam Gallery, a contemporary-art gallery devoted to emerging Middle Eastern talent.

It has now become a conduit for Syrian artists to express their responses to the devastation of their country.

Selected solo and group exhibitions include Ayyam Gallery Al Quoz, Dubai (2012, 2009); Ayyam Gallery DIFC, Dubai (2011); Ayyam Gallery Beirut (2010); Ayyam Gallery Damascus (2010).

Type of work

The canvases of Syrian artist Tammam Azzam are experiments in the application of various media.  Unusual components such a rope, clothes pins and other found objects are employed to create depth, texture and space, achieving a striking balance between the ordinary objects the artist portrays and the grand terrain that he evokes. For Azzam, such a methodology facilitates the creation of an artwork as a “hybrid form,” one that is capable of borrowing and multiplying as it evolves.

Recent works have used digital media to examine the ongoing political and social upheaval in Syria, and the cycles of violence and destruction tearing his country apart. Each artwork coincides with a particular event of the Uprising, depicting a variety of fractured and wounded maps of Syria, fallen chess pawns and other symbols reconfigured in powerful reflections of the turmoil facing his countrymen.

Why choosing him?

I really like the type of his work which are simple in composition and the material used but with depth. Thanks to the Arab Spring, the human rights are advocated louder and louder in the Arab world. As a Syrian himself, his work is his form of protest. Most of the work is irony to show that how failure his country’s government is. People are living in terror. Most of them cannot lead a normal life and what children know is only bombs and tanks. Besides mocking the existing government, Tammam also shows a different side of the country, a side which is other than wars and that is creativity. Talented artists and prominent artworks can be produced from this country. He is quite a special artist who is not using mainly as artistic side, but more for expressing his discontent towards violence and wars his country.

Tammam Azzam superimposed Gustav Klimt’s The Kiss on to an image of a Syrian bomb site.

According to the United Nations, more than 60,000 people have been killed so far in Syria’s devastating civil war. The thousands of photographs that have come out of this conflict are a powerful visual record of the violence being committed. And now, one digitally-manipulated image by a Syrian artist is capturing the Internet’s imagination.

Source

http://www.ayyamgallery.com/artists/tammam-azzam/bio

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/07/world/middleeast/haunted-by-war-syrian-artists-put-raw-emotions-on-view.html?_r=0

http://newsfeed.time.com/2013/02/06/syrian-artist-pays-homage-to-gustav-klimts-the-kiss/

Otodate —listening exercise by Akio Suzuki

Q: Why is pier a suitable place to perform sound art?

A: That’s because sound assembles there.

  I have never thought that sound could be a form of art. I know music is one of the kinds but when it comes to sound, I really have no idea. Kwun Tong Ferry Pier is a spacious place where we could hear a lot of echo from the sea and from the road. We headed to the second floor to watch the performance of a Japanese artist called Akio Suzuki and his partner, Hiromi Miyakita.

  I was very confused at the beginning of the performance as I was not sure who Mr. Suzuki was. He did not dress up and was carrying his backpack. Later, I realized it was him the artist until he started to build the wood sticks. He connected ten sets of wood sticks in a row with a rope putting underneath as a mark. Soon, nails were hammered on the sticks one by one and sound was produced. The nails were hammered in regular time slot and therefore the sound produced was monotonous and dull. Hiromi started to ‘move’ her body according to the sound. Her movement was slow and not graceful. I wonder what would happen next.

  

Then Mr. Suzuki hammered the nails more quickly and lively. He concentrated very much on his work. It seemed that he picked up the nails from the bucket then hammered them without thinking. Hiromi started to dance instead of ‘moving her body’. Her movement was more coherent and with elegance. However, I don’t think her dancing is widely accepted by the public because we can’t tell which type of dancing she was doing. It was a bit weird although it followed the sound well.

  

After Mr. Suzuki had hammered all the nails (there were almost 300 nails!), he suddenly took out a pair of chopsticks from the bucket. He used the chopsticks to sweep through all the nails. The sound produced was like xylophone. It was clear and had different pitch. He swept through the nails in different pace and his partner danced with bigger movements. I think this was quite a nice piece of music. Some of our students said Hiromi was like a caterpillar struggles to become a butterfly. I think this is true because she just sat down and did some hand gestures. But later, she stood up and danced and ran with energy. However, you really had to get into the show to see this or else you would have no idea what they were doing.

  

When it came to the second part of the performance, the two artists shifted to the other side of the pier area to start another performance. There were ten glass bottles which were filled with water on the floor and Hiromi took up the bottles and danced. The water splashed out according to her movement. Some beautiful patterns which were in circle form were made on the floor. The only sound we could hear was the breeze. Later, Mr. Suzuki joined. He blew on the mouth of the bottles. People who stood beside me seemed to have some giggles. I think that’s because we all played this when we were small! It was really fun and actually, the sound was pleasant to listen to. It was like the whistle of the boat. They were not looking at each other but they were like having a conversation, a casual conversation using sound. Hiromi danced without remembering the steps. She just danced randomly with what she heard.

  Is this mean by freeing the sound? Using sound to communicate (instead of talking)? Maybe this is a way for human to communicate with the environment. We were masked by many ‘man-made’ sounds nowadays: phones, machines, transports etc. There are fewer and fewer chances for us to listen to birds whistle, water flow and breeze. I don’t think human can communicate only by using sound as we have language. We are all used to talking as our communication channel. You can do so unless you are Mr. Suzuki, having such a familiar partner who practises lots and lots to communicate with you in this way!

Wah Luen Industrial Centre Block A Visit

Wah Luen Industrial Centre Block A Visit

Overall feelings and comments

I have never been to any art gallery in industrial buildings. This is my first time and I think this is an eye-opening experience. ‘Art is hard to make a living’ people always mention this but I don’t think this is true although I could see that some artists are leading a hard life. Most of them combined their studios and their living areas together. 

I understand that they may get inspired anytime so that they can immediately transfer their ideas into creation. Yet, inside the industrial buildings the environment was dirty and dark. Unpleasant raw pork smell came into my nose time by time and the floor was soaked with water in upper levels. 

Interestingly, most of the artists did sell their creation directly but I don’t agree that art is hard to make a living at all. That’s because I saw few business cards were thrown inside the cards collecting box in some studios. If the company is willing to drop the business card, I think the artist is willing to cooperate with them. Some flats were rented by non-artists. They sold homemade food or organic food and visitors can enjoy the food in a small dinning room besides. Live cooking was shown in front and this attracted people to squeeze in the studio continuously. This was surely a wise way to earn profit.

Impressive Studio

The studio which impressed me most was ‘Out of Place’ ran by an artist called Cath Brophy. It was located in Unit 3, 16/F, Block A, Wah Luen. All the creations by Cath were large-scale collage drawings which were inspired by the contrasting styles of modern housing blocks and traditional houses in Hong Kong. 

The drawings were mainly painted with Charcoal, pastel and pencil only but they could still come out with excellent effect. I found the way she collages several characteristics of different architecture together into one creation interesting. Although all of the creations were only in black and white, the effect of three-dimension was very strong. I extremely like grids and parallel stuffs so when the parts were bound together, which were the different parts of different architectures in different directions, I still thought that they were parallel.

Besides, when I looked into the parts separately, I could recognize which type of buildings they are from. For instant in the work below, the window in the left are definitely from traditional temples with small circles and a cross lies on it.  It was enjoyable to look at the creation no matter you were seeing it in macro or digesting it in detail. I also like the scale of the creations. They were all huge like around 400x500 cm in size. The work seemed to enclose me and each part were nearly in their real sizes.

Different parts of different buildings were compressed into one creation yet there were enough spaces between each part. They ‘lived’ together very well and balanced each other. 

This is similar to the living environment in Hong Kong. It is crowd to live in Hong Kong without a doubt. However, each of us still has our own space, regardless of the size. We do not disturb people living around us yet we meet sometimes. It is just like different parts of different buildings overlap at some points but we can still trace the patterns clearly and will not feel dizzy. Can’t imagine a foreign artist can observe the buildings and living environment in Hong Kong that detailed. The creations match the real situation well. I appreciate this series of work.

Feelings towards Hong Kong Artists

I don’t think that art is dying in Hong Kong as I can see that many artists are still contributing tones of efforts to what they fond of. They paint with passion and willing to share their creations and foster the movement of art. 

The work I saw that day was in large variety even though I have just visited one of the fifteen industrial buildings! There must be more and more to see! Most of them were fascinating in which some of types really strike against me. That’s because I have never seen a similar type of work before. However, I nearly dropped after I have visited Wah Luen Industrial Centre Block A. Hope I can sleep more before the day I visit next time!