What is Conceptual Art?
Conceptual art is art that the concepts or ideas involved in the work has priority over traditional aesthetic art. It prizes ideas over the formal or visual components of art works. Conceptual artists produced works and writings that completely rejected standard ideas of art. Many artworks of conceptual art can be conducted by anyone by just following a set of written instructions. Marcel Duchamp's thought about art was significant to conceptual art. It is natural for people to seek something pleasant to their eyes. Maybe this fact made the artists to make their paintings retinal. However, Marcel Duchamp said art shouldn't be eye candies but it should emphasise thinking. |
Artist Yoko Ono
Ono became famous around 1960s as she married Beatles front man John Lennon. Yoko Ono (小野 洋子,born 18 February 1933), is a contemporary Japanese visual artist, multimedia artist, singer, and peace activist. Yoko Ono had many gallery and museum exhibitions. She is also known for her work in avant-garde art, music, and filmmaking. Ono was an member of Fluxus and her artworks were significantly influenced by John Cage and Marcel Duchamp. Ono was also an experimental film maker who made 16 films between 1964 and 1972, that made her a notable artist. She also did a performance which she is sitting on a stage and audience one by one come up to stage and cut small piece of her clothing. I was startled when I saw the performance she did, since becoming gradually naked by others' hand is something that most of woman would not stand. However, I was also amazed by her courage to be on the stage and do the performance herself for the sake of art. |
Simon Hantaï - Foldings
Simon Hantaï is a painter related to abstract art. In 1960, Hantaï invented a very interesting way of drawing: his own technique called "pliage" (folding). This technique is folding and scrunching the canvas and then painting the canvas, then unfolding it, leaving some blank spaces of the canvas that looks like patterns. Hantai first started working on his pilage (folding) method from 1960 to 1962 with cloaks. From 1967 to 1968 he worked on the Meun series where he studied the theme of the figure. Meun is the name of a small village in the Fontainbleau Forest which he lived from 1965. | |
Khyber Pass, Self-Portrait as an Oriental, After Rembrandt. 2005
Vik Muniz
Vik Muniz is a Brazilian artist and photographer. He was originally a sculptor but he later came to be interested with the photographic representations of his work, eventually focusing completely on photography. Muniz uses various types of mediums such as diamonds, sugar, thread, chocolate syrup and garbage in his art to create bold, ironic and deceiving imagery. He is well known for recreating famous imagery from art history or pop culture with unexpected, everyday objects, and photographing them. For example, Muniz's Action Photo, After Hans, a Cibachrome print, is a Bosco Chocolate Syrup recreation of one of Hans Namuth’s photographs of Jackson Pollock in his studio. The series Pictures of Car Parts is his social commentary of the car culture of Los Angeles utilizing 60's Pop masterpieces by Ed Ruscha rendered from car ephemeral.' It is very interesting that one can use so many types of medium with so many different colours to describe and express an object, and it's so amazing that although there are so many colours and mediums with different textures but it’s still possible to see the portrait of man. His face is very delicately expressed. Muniz has spoken that he wants to create "color pictures that talked about color and also talked about the practical simplification of such impossible concepts". To me... I personally really like this kind of art. It is my personal taste of art and the artwork I most liked when I went to the gallery in Central was similar to this one. It is very interesting that one can use so many types of medium with so many different colours to describe and express an object. It's so amazing that although there are so many colours and mediums with different textures but I can still see the portrait of man. his face is very delicately expressed. So far this is my favourite art piece among the ones I saw in the lecture. |
Cai Guo-Qiang (蔡国强), born 8 December 1957, is a Chinese contemporary artist currently living and working in New York City.
Cai Guo-Qiang first began working with gunpowder to foster spontaneity and confront and challenge the quelling, disciplined traditional art in China. While he was living in Japan from 1986 to 1995, he explored the properties of gunpowder, and it later eventually led him to experiment with explosives on enormous canvas and the development of his signature "explosion events". In 1995, he moved to New York because he was granted from the New York-based Asian Cultural Council, which is the international organisation that promotes artistic exchanges between Asian countries and the United States.
To me...
When I first heard of 'gunpowder painting', I thought the painter was going to glue gunpowder on the canvas. However, when I watched the whole video, they first put the gunpowder in the shape that the painter wants and then put fire on the gunpowder that there is small explosion. It was amazing to see that the stain of burned gunpowder can express delicate image on the huge painting.
Cai Guo-Qiang first began working with gunpowder to foster spontaneity and confront and challenge the quelling, disciplined traditional art in China. While he was living in Japan from 1986 to 1995, he explored the properties of gunpowder, and it later eventually led him to experiment with explosives on enormous canvas and the development of his signature "explosion events". In 1995, he moved to New York because he was granted from the New York-based Asian Cultural Council, which is the international organisation that promotes artistic exchanges between Asian countries and the United States.
To me...
When I first heard of 'gunpowder painting', I thought the painter was going to glue gunpowder on the canvas. However, when I watched the whole video, they first put the gunpowder in the shape that the painter wants and then put fire on the gunpowder that there is small explosion. It was amazing to see that the stain of burned gunpowder can express delicate image on the huge painting.