FIN 130 UNIT 1 RESEARCH ASSIGNMENT: Art + Design using 3D line
GOOGLE SLIDES PRESENTATION
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1uKBjPnpGmqW5_Jb8NSiogUlH5tA8Ic2H7wD_3GrhBQo/edit?usp=sharing
Antony Gormley
Unedited Transcripts:
So these are my notes for Anthony Gormley. I’m looking at his reflection pieces from 2016. It says here as a child growing up next to the sea and often being alone on the beach. At the end of the day, there was a sense of almost disappearing into the combination of light ground and air.
Even though this is a drawing it really makes me wonder about an artists use of space. It seems that Anthony Gormley’s 3D pieces. Often explore not just the construction or form of the body, but abstractions of the body and obviously, how they can, you be used either to create other 3D forms or to take up a 3D space.
Often his works feel emotional to some degree or like they are inspired by a certain concept. Personally I can’t always follow the point of what he is trying to do and at first instinct when I look at his work it’s difficult not to think that anybody could make certain pieces.
Certainly though it’s easy to tell the that not everyone would think the same way as this artist. And I think that’s why maybe he has such an attachment to the human form in an exploring, it in multiple ways in 3d, I do like that, he’s chosen the human form because it’s one of my favorites subjects as well in art.
But he explores it in such a different way or different language that’s difficult for someone like me to understand why an artist would do it that way. Upon first glance. So sleeping place from 1974, actually first. So with the reflection pieces has drawings. Yeah, those made me really wonder how someone who can already look at 3D from a 2D perspective and create 2D art in this way translates that into 3D because to me, it looks like someone who already sees in 3D largely just putting it onto paper. So it feels like the opposite of some artists beginning process to starting 3D and I guess as artists a lot of us try to think in 3D or express in a certain 3d way more to trick the eye into thinking something is 3d on the page, but it’s just looks like he uses the planes of nature and illusion and And other 2D examples he uses graph paper, for example, to maybe look at it more from a formal conformally, constructed way.
So yeah, moving on to sleeping place from 1974. This one is with plaster and linen and I chose this kind of because I know we’re going to be doing the wire construction with. I think it’s burlap coming up or similar fabric. So I wanted to look at the construction of this.
It’s interesting because I think this is maybe one of the oldest pieces he has on his website. I really like the way that the drapery sits and the way that you can see the drapery forming around, what we assume to be a human form and looking at it again.
Certain parts look a little deformed from what you would expect human to look like maybe the head looks really large and heavy on, you know, this boardwalk or wooden planking whatever this is but the materials allow for so much detail and certainly more softness than we would probably see with specifically wire alone.
But it does get me thinking about, you know, how you can maybe have something more new honest and more detailed. And just these fine kind of lines that you can maybe sneak in there into a sort of plastered creation or maybe even just to think about and visualize how plaster or burlap might look when formed around something like wire and how to get the shape that you want.
So it looks fun and interesting to play with. You obviously won’t have necessarily of the energy details that you would be able to see through in a transparent way with just wire or even if sheer kind of material on top. But even that is interesting to think about using like a shear material on top of wire.
Yeah, that’s all I can really think of about this. So, the other thing I think is interesting, conceptually is that a lot of his human figures don’t have a face. And I think some viewers could see that as a more isolating feeling, or could add to a theme of like lack of humanity, lack of identity and uniformity, but I think it also lends to a nice quality, where a lot of us could look at a piece like this and see a degree of vulnerability.
Like it feels very vulnerable because of the kind of fetal position pose, and also like would be interesting for if someone wanted to explore self-portrait but they don’t particularly like having portraits of themselves out, right? There’s that lack of identity and having the face covered, where not only could someone retain their anonymity, but I think that others haven’t easier time.
Oddly enough seeing themselves in something with out of face. It’s like a both abstract quality and not abstract because we recognize the human body, it just doesn’t have a familiar face attached with it. Another piece that I posted on the first page of Antony Gormley’s. Part of my presentation is this piece called passage which was done in 2016 with weathering steel and in the photograph you can see that person can actually stand in the space of the creation.
He’s made like the sculpture and I feel like this is a really cool installation and interactive piece like almost a what do you call them? Almost a performance piece but definitely something that you can interact with Cindy who is in my 250 class as well. Made a really interesting piece that you could interact with that was in art show at the end of last year and I believe she used like things that could be found on a beach as like litter and hung them all up.
And she was telling me the story as she walked through the like sculpture with me. And she was telling me that she was thinking about how the earth must feel and like the environment must feel with all of this kind of human garbage and just trash littered everywhere and our impact on the environment.
So I thought it was a very meaningful project even if she didn’t necessarily see all of them meaning in it herself or the impact. But kind of goes back to what the first artist I was researching talked about which is experiencing the world in with touch because all those sensations and textures of like the sort of light paper materials and walking through, that really felt like you were surrounded with all this stuff and all these sensations.
So it was a really interesting way to translate that into a 3d format and have people actually be able to experience what she was like this phenomenon. She was talking about and I feel like, I don’t know the story behind this, I might have to look this up for Anthony Gormley’s piece, but I feel like this is kind of a similar idea, except it’s like, what would it feel like To be inside this case to be inside this body.
And it kind of makes me wish, I could be there to do that myself, but makes me wonder if the hollowed out part goes all the way through to the end. Like would many people go all the way through what they tried to go all the way through and come back.
It looks like you could probably fit through and do it that way if you wanted to, and, you know, how long would it take to walk through there? And you’d be walking essentially, through the darkness, like, almost complete darkness. I imagine. So, it’s interesting to think about that and who’s experience, he’s trying to get the viewer, or participant to feel would be definitely really interesting to see something like that and explore that in real life.
I also feel like I can understand this piece of it better because I’m realizing as I’m talking about this that almost all of his other sculpture pieces and arrangements seem to be interactive and that you can probably walk around them and maybe or even allowed to touch them. I don’t know.
But this one just looks more plainly obvious. How a person would interact with it because you can look literally fit inside.
I think the last piece I’ll talk about from Antony Gormley, is this have have men peace from 1994 and granite and it’s 10. But 10.1 by 3 by 1.90 meters. And it’s a permanent installation and Norway. So when this photo was taken the weather and the mountains in the background, have that kind of bluish wintery tint.
And the water just looks very serene and bluish gray as well. And the sky looks like a very light gray with possibly some soft but dark gray clouds in there, too. And we only see the back of the installation, really. And it’s a human form again and you can’t really tell if it’s male or female, I get the sense, it could be female, but there’s no hair or anything to tell that and looks like it has some sort of lines going down the body.
I’m not sure if those are from moisture or something, he created himself like a textury created. It definitely. Looks like there are more intentional lines etched into the statue or the installment. I’m not sure if that’s just the way the pieces were put together but either way, it’s really interesting.
Some of them sit on like joints or around joints and there’s one around, what looks like the bottom of this statue. That would be probably around mid-calf and then that line kind of tapers downwards. And there’s just a what looks to be a few inches of just continuation of the legs, going straight into the water.
So I really like the use of the granite. It looks like a really similar kind of color scheme to the environment around it. So it looks like the sculpture was just meant to be there. It’s really gorgeous. And in a place where there’s so much interrupted water, it really stands out.
But again, it looks like it belongs. There, it stands out and is very noticeable on. There’s just something really appealing about it. I’m really also like that he’s using the reflection as another part of the 3d sculpture or 3d view and, you know, depending on the time of day or how busy the water is and things like that and how windy it is.
You can only imagine that the reflection would appear in different ways and have different colors and different emanations. As I’m sure the statue would and different weather and things like that. I think there’s a certain degree of permanence with it being there, that matches the mountains and the surrounding area.
Like, you know, the mountain that we’re going to go away, they’re never really going to change and I’ve always kind of liked meditating on mountains, so it feels like the statue. In being made of stone, is kind of a similar idea. In that sense.