Different Artists and their Works - Essay Example

Different Artists and their Works Charles Dwyer Charles Dwyer is an American artist best known for his exemplary drawings. He was born in 1961 in West Bend, Wisconsin. He developed an interest in drawing at a very young age. While in schooling at West Bend East high School, he excelled in art and this earned him a West Bend Art Museum. He joined the Milwaukee School of Art and Design to major in Fine Arts and later graduated as a Valedictorian. His rise to fame started when the West Bend Museum did an exhibition of his outstanding work in 1985. He later traveled to Europe where he met some influencial artsists such as Alexei Jawlensky, Sonia Delaunay and Egon Schiele. His vists to Europe made him develop a passion for artistic concepts such as restoration, decorative arts and expressionist art (Milwaukee Institute of art and Design). While making his compositions, Dwyer normally stages the scene that he wants to create. He incorporates costume design, backdrops and props as well as make up in his preparations. After staging his composition, he then captures it with a Mamiya camera which has got a 6x7 medium frame or Ebony 4x5 (Milwaukee Institute of art and Design). He does not shy away from technology when creating his images. He utilizes high level techniques to create some bold, striking and captivating images. The artist’s approach is quite different and new as it uses mixed media to create paintings. These paintings have both figurative and literal layers. His artistic processes involve the use of textiles, applied art, theatre and costume. For instance, his Moulin Rouge series utilizes costume by using water color and etching. He pieces together fabric segments onto a paper. Some patterned paper may be added into the fabric segments through the collage process. Dwyer considers drawing to be “the foundation for everything” (Milwaukee Institute of art and Design). For his drawings he uses materials such as oil, collage, pastel and paper, textiles, photography and computer imagery. Dwyer’s dedication to his drawings has made him one of the most important drawing artists of his time. He has managed to create unique drawings by using a variety of materials and not just pencil and paper. The artist loves what he does, and this has enabled him to be innovative enough in his work. Nan Goldin Nan Goldin is a renowned American photographer. She was born in 1953 in Washington, DC but grew up in Boston. When she was only 14 years old, her older sister committed suicide. Her relationship with her family was somewhat cold, and so she turned to her friends whom she treated as her alternate family. She moved from one foster home to another before enrolling in an alternative school known as Satya Community School in Lincoln, Massachusetts. It was at Satya that Goldin was introduced to the world of photography. She made some of her closest friends while at the school (Goldin, Cave and Costa 7). Her initial photography was her way of preserving the memories of her friends or people that she did not want to forget. Fashion photography fascinated Goldin while she was at Satya. She and her friends used to dress up and take photos of each other. They experimented on various aspects of cross dressing and drag. This was perhaps what influenced Goldin to concentrate on the blurry line in her consequent works. Since Goldin was fascinated by the drag culture, which was common lace in Boston, she began taking photographs of drag queens in the early 1970s (Goldin et. al 10). Goldin’s photographic processes depicted the subjects in a non-judgmental and straightforward manner. Her photographs normally had characteristics of drag which is depicted in various preparation stages. Some of her photographs which depict different stages of preparation include Ivy wearing a Fall, Kenny Putting on Make-up and David at Grove Street. These and many more of her photographs portray the tumultuous times that existed when she was taking the photos. During this period, Goldin attended the Boston School of fine Arts, something that made her change her style of photography (Goldin et. al 14. Prior to joining Boston School of Fine Arts Goldin had only used black and white film and only relied on available light sources as opposed to using flash. She started using color, and this became an important part of her photographic work from then on. Her work is unique as she rarely uses natural light; instead she carefully uses her flash to illuminate her subjects. She utilizes the photographic process known as Cibachrome to create bright and deep hues (Goldin et. al 33). The process has enabled the photographer to create the sharp, brightly colored photographs for which she is well known for. Her photographs depicting the hard lifestyles of excessive drug use as well as abusive lifestyles were common in the early 1980s. The Ballad of Sexual Dependency is one of her most famous works during this period. Although her photography has continued to evolve as she herself changes as an artist, her themes continue to be the same: love, domesticity, sexuality and gender. She uses different materials such as camera, flash and colored film to produce her work (45). Her use of her personal experiences in her photography may be what has made her work so unique and such a force to reckon with. She is fearless in creating photographs that communicate what she wants them to communicate. Her dedication and sincerity in her photography have without a doubt propelled Goldin to be one of the greatest photographers of our times. Larry Bell Larry Bell is an American artist and sculptor born in 1939 in Chicago. He studied in the Los Angeles-based Chouinard Art Institute under Robert Irwin. During the course of his long career that spans more than 40 years, his work has been on display in various states and in many countries outside the US. Some of his earliest cube sculptures were created to rest on pedestals that were transparent. These sculptures normally featured the use of ellipses, hexagonal and checker arrangements as well as parallelograms. He used a wide range of materials such as brass, Formica and wood for his earlier works (Bell and Abuquerque Museum 12). Bell started creating three dimensional glass cubes in 1962. In his sculpting career, Bell has used a wide range of materials such as polyester resin, Plexiglas, cast acrylic, luminescent and phosphorescent agents, dielectricoated glass and fiberglass. (Richards and Gilbert 18). Bell uses an artistic concept that touches on the relationship between an object of art and its environment. He uses reflective and structural properties to address this object-environment relationship. Bell uses his surfaces as both windows and mirrors (Bell and Albuquerque Museum 23). This means that the sculptures can be viewed from the underneath and above as well as from all the four sides. This process makes his sculptures have a sense of weightlessness. Apart from glass, bell also has uses other materials such as bronze to create his sculptures. Although he continues to create glass cube sculptures, Bell has concentrated on making cubes that have beveled edges and not plates sitting within a metal frame as was the case before. He covers the glass with some form of film of metallic particles. This process is known as the thin film deposition. Bell uses this technique to enhance the reflectiveness and transparency of the glass (Bell and Albuquerque Museum 56). Bell’s innovative use of the thin film deposition technique has made him one of the most important modern day sculptors, not only in the US but in other parts of the world as well. He is not afraid to embrace the latest technology in his work, and this may have contributed to his present success. His sculptures are not only made using hi-tech methods, they are also well thought out and intricately created to bring out the intended message. Chantal Akerman Charles Akerman is a Belgian artist and filmmaker born in 1950 in Brussels. She is one o the few internationally recognized female filmmakers of today. She is renowned for her hyperrealist style of filmmaking. Akerman resolved to be a film maker at the age of 15 after watching Pierrot lefou, a 1965 Jean-Luc Godard film. She enrolled at a Belgian film school, Institut National Superieur des arts du Spectacle et des Techniques de Diffusion when she was only 18. However, she left the institute during the first term to make the 13-minute, black and white ‘Saute ma Ville’. Shortly after the film premiered in 1971, she decided to move to New York where she remained until 1972. While in New York she across the works of Andy Warhol, Jonas Mekas and Michael Snow with which she was very impressed (Akerman, Sultan, Arning and Carvajal 5). When she returned to Belgium in 1973, she continued creating films which were so intricately created that they earned her much critical acclaim both at home and beyond. She uses a concept of film making that enables her to fix images between existing images. She also makes use of extended duration takes in her films. These kinds of shots allow her to move back and forth the images between figuration and abstraction. She uses such materials as cameras, video cameras and computer editing software to create her films (Akerman et. al 8). Akerman’s films are based on a number of themes, but the most common one is abut women’s sexuality. In her films Akerman explores the lives of women at home and at work. She examines their relationships with other women, men and children. Other topics covered in Akerman’s films include love, food, sex, art and romance (19). Through her films, Akerman has managed to highlight different aspects of a woman’s life. The intricate way she brings out her message is perhaps one of the reasons why she is regarded as one of the best film makers. Akerman is a great film maker because she has managed to achieve what many filmmakers have failed to achieve: the real portrayal of a woman. Her simplistic yet intricate films have won her great acclaim for they are realistic and professionally created. Works Cited Akerman, Chantal, Terrie Sultan, Bill Arning and Rina Carvajal. Chantal Akerman: Moving Through Time and Space. Houston, TX: The Art Museum of the University of Houston, 2008. Print Bell, Larry and Albuquerque Museum. Zones of experience: The Art of Larry Bell. Albuquerque, NM: Albuquerque Museum, 1997. Print (Bell and Abuquerque Museum 12) Goldin, Nan, Nick Cave and Gido Costa. The Devil’s Playground. New York: Phaidon Press. Print Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design. Charles Dwyer: Drawn Inspiration. 2010. Web. Nov. 22, 2010. Richards, Brent and Dennis Gilbert. New Glass Architecture. Yale University Press, 2006. Print Read More