Exam Piece – The Force of One Man

So the theme for my GCSE exam was ‘Force’. As soon as I heard force was my theme, the first thing that came to mind was the Holocaust. I thought that I would be able to make a very powerful piece if I used this for the subject of my work.

As I started planning, I decided I wanted this it to be a multimedia piece. I wanted this work to be something completely different to what I had done before. I used everything from plaster to newspaper. Some materials I used include fabric, newspaper, plaster, wire, paint and much more.

I started looking into works by other artists relating to this subject matter and found some very interesting pieces that inspired me very much. One of the pieces I looked at was ‘Schalechet (Fallen Leaves)’ by Menashe Kadishman. This piece is an installation at the Jewish Museum in Berlin. The piece is over 10,000 open mouthed faces representing the murdering of the Jews. I used the design of these faces to create my own version in the exam.

Above is an image of my finished piece. This was done in a 10 hour exam and will go towards my final GCSE grade. The piece turned out even better then I imagined! I am very pleased with the outcome and I think I have created a very powerful piece that truly shows “The Force of One Man”.

Do you think this piece is powerful? What is your feedback on my piece? Leave comments and let me know what you think…

Delisle’s Paintings within Paintings

Canadian Art Junkie

Philip Delisle explores the process of making art – from the role of the artist to the purpose of the work. The paintings on exhibit in Ottawa this month (Metapainting) are vignettes, or windows into the artist’s experience.

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R.B. Kitaj: Obsessions

I recently visited R.B. Kitaj’s exhibition on show at the Jewish Museum London. I found his work to be very inspiring and his work was quite powerful. I think that this exhibition really demonstrates the emotion of Kitaj at the time of creating the work. 

 

The work on the right in the above image – ‘If Not, Not’ I think is probably one of Kitaj’s most powerful pieces! Seeing it in person is definitely quite emotional and it really gets into the viewers mind. The ‘cultural disintegration’ going on in the painting is a summary of what happened during the Holocaust and shows Kitaj’s view on what happened.

Leave feedback with your views on Kitaj or the subject of Kitaj’s work, tell me how you feel about what his work demonstrates! 

Start to finish

Another piece of work from my human form project. This piece was based on Ai Weiwei’s ‘Dropping a Han-Dynasty Urn’

I decided to use a basketball to capture three images of me dropping it. I wanted to include myself in this work.

What do you think? Leave feedback and let me know your thoughts…

Picasso style

I had the opportunity of going to the Picasso Exhibition at the Tate Modern in London. I saw some amazing works both by Picasso and other artists inspired by his style. At the exhibition I saw an amazing work by Wyndham Lewis, ‘A Reading of Ovid’ 

I cropped this section of the painting and used it in my work. My idea was to paint this figure, and then the same figure looking in the opposite direction. The figure looking in the opposite direction was to painted in the complementary colours to show its the opposite of the actual figure cropped from the painting. 

I painted the shading using raw umber to begin with. This was done as an undercoat to be painting over with colour after. 

This is the finished painting. Unfortunately the opposite figure’s jacket came turned out to be more of a red then an orange. I still think these figures look good together and I think the piece has a unique look.

Sculpture round 2

I enjoyed working with sculpture so much I decided to make a second sculpture. I very much liked the style of Alberto Giacometti so decided to create a sculpture similar to his works. 

Sculpture

Most of my previous works have been paintings and generally 2D based work. I decided that it was time to experiment with sculpture.

I used wire to make a human figure similar to the style of Alberto Giacometti. I then used the same technique to make the figure for the second part to the sculpture. However the second figure was padded out and plastered.

This is the finished sculpture. I like how the two sculptures look together. I think the combination of both wire and plastered sculpture looks effective and adds interest to the piece.

Andy Warhol

Andy Warhol is one of my favourite artists. I think that Pop is a very exciting art form and it appeals to a wide range. Warhol was definitely the face of Pop. When someone mentions Pop Art I instantly think of Andy Warhol.

So I decided to use Warhol’s ’10 Marilyns’ as the basis for my next work. I took a picture of me and edited it in the same style of ’10 Marilyns’. For my piece there are only six images, however I think the finished effect looks very good.

Edgar Degas Study

 A piece I worked on a while ago, at the beginning of the project, was a copy of Edgar Degas’ ‘A Women Coming Her Hair’. This piece was done on sugar paper using chalk pastels.

I think that chalk pastels were a great medium to use for this piece as I was able to blend colours easily and really get the effect I was going for. I also enjoyed working with chalk pastels as they’re not a medium I would generally use. 

Moving on to Human Forms…

So, I moved onto my Human Form project a while ago and am in the process of uploading some work and completing some pieces. This image I have uploaded is my project brainstorm page. Just an overview of things I could look into over the course of my project