huiwen'scosmic

27/01/2020, English Natures Opera

This Monday, I had a chance to see a free opera with my classmates thanks to my tutor. It was my first experience of enjoying an English opera in a traditional opera architecture. This opera taking in the English National Opera in the evening was an modern adaptation of the original novel——Carmen from Prosper Mérimée, a French writer two hundred years ago. I have heard of Carmen years ago, but yet I still hadn’t watch the opera by my eyes.

Carmen tells a story of a complex, strong and passionate woman struggling for the equal status, independent personality in a man-dominating world and her yearning to be loved. This opera was divided into two Acts. The first Act showed how Carmen lives in a poor place that soldiers passed by frequently, and the meeting with her lover Army Corporal Don Jose. But their love experienced up and downs under different values. Foe example, the man Jose affected by his mom soon got angry with his obsessed Carmen and fell into jealousy when Carmen turned her attention to a bullfighter Escamillo. Then violence happened between him and Carmen. During this process, the poor people are seeking for a transformation of their lives. While Carmen never compromised to the reality till the end of her death due to the jealous and crazy man.

Carmen is an out-going, passionate and brave woman. Burning the whole story, she was courageous to show her desires for love, for comfort and kindness. And she is never afraid of expressing her wants and feelings. This feature has left a deep impression on me. And I could still remember how she sung out that lines: “ Love is my only answer.”

The good performance of actors made me drawn to the story and the flowing change of emotions. They used different actions to perform different characters’ personalities. For instance, there was one scene showing the fight occurring between Carmen and Jose. Then Jose immediately turned to confront the car near him and put hands on the hip without any word, revealing a angry gesture of serious man. Meanwhile, Carmen showed a totally different action. She sat on the ground with unstopped movements of hands like throwing something out in order to depict her discomposure even thought her shouting and face looked more logical and calm. These performances were great references for my animation making.

Moreover, the lighting and costumes were very impressive as well for me. Looking at many scenes, I found they always used lighting, especially the spot lighting of warm (yellow) or cool (blue) tone to create a mood atmosphere related to the section of the story. A strong spot lighting could penetrate the dark into people’s heart. And different angles’ lighting could create different situations such as making a row of people standing in front of the ground light and letting the shadows stretching through the stage in order to create a hazy and hopeful scene as the characters’ mind. Their costumes were simple and close to the usual life. Like Carmen, she always wore a one-piece dress. Solider should had gary green uniforms and other refugees wore colourful clothes. And the colours were keeping a balance between the strong lights and clothes. They even cancelled complex and unimportant stage properties for the emphasis on the main characters and action.

Generally speaking, I have learnt and observed a lot from this opera. And it is a useful way to study the body and emotion languages, and creating the atmosphere.

19/12/2019

This week I have visited the Cartoon Museum in the central London in a rainy afternoon. With the freezing air, I walked into this general-size glass house and went downstairs to a basement space——not a very wide space that can exhibit enough cartoon papers. They were showing a regular exhibition of British cartoon from the eighteen century and an additional one for manga works collected from some cartoonists. During this visit, I could enjoy a kind of British comic style which can be found in today’s British cartoons and followed the trace of manga development to consider the future’s form of the manga itself.

Cartoon can be traced back to ancient cave paintings as a sort of illustration expressing feelings, emotions and ideas. While the modern cartoon originated from the caricatures during the 17th century in the west. Many cartoons were drawn as characters with humour in some social events, fashion politics. But some were used as a means of exercises depicting the daily situation. Like the two pictures below, they shows that the late 18th century in Britain some cartoonists drew a situation captured in one moment in daily life. We can see the old gentleman standing in the centre and writing on a red notebook (left), and feel the breeze and breathing to these two long-hair girls (right). They were all simplified and designed images. And characters were looked as the keys to the drawings.

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These two below represent one kind of sarcasm art to some social phenomenons by means of creating metaphorically human-like animals in designed circumstances. The class issues, the war and the power all can be found through these cartoons. At that time, British cartoonists liked to animals as an allegory of the humanity and social issues.

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These below look like a mirror of the war during the capitalism expansion time. The left below re-enacts the struggle of young soldiers and the right one creates a funny way of depicting the war by engineering a complex machine with a function of blowing the bombs the enemy is dropping. Ironically, they made the war like a joker to some extent.

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British cartoonists began to draw silhouette as a cartoon style during the 19th century. And they made it as an efficient form of the storytelling.

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This picture describes two constant parts of stories: a robber-like man is walking into a party where someone is smoking near a dancing couple, then this man is shooting someone by guns. The outlines of these characters are various with the details in order to show more information about these figures, even though they are less-featured and are not exaggerating as nowadays’ characters.

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And some are depicting interesting moments in different social activities.

From the late 19th century, most British cartoons became more featured and exaggerating. And the styles varied much. We can see the highly simplified and funny characters designed from these cartoons below.

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They started to reduce more details and highlight the key features of a character in the cartoon work mostly though using black lines. It is powerful to depict some group phenomenas in the society.

At the same time, some cartoonists were considering the creation of atmospheres in the cartoon. For instance, the picture below emphasises on the light expression by means of shadows in black and light in white, which was used to enhance a feeling of hope from dark.

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This cartoon work is very special when comparing others. It reveals an aesthetically designed map of island surrounded by sea and a laden ship sailing towards it from an angle of the high airspace. The colours and style used in it seem to create a strong atmosphere of salvation.

The story comics, which nowadays we call manga, could also be traced back to this period. Under the rapid development of modern industries in the uk, people’s entertainments needed more new bloods. More cartoonists drew funny characters and put them into a story of constant images mostly published on the newspaper. Their contents consisted of the new lifestyle of industrialisation and some elements from circus and fairy tales. We can see the two below.

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However, the early comics had a very limit of storyboards and no conception of lens use. Most of them are divided into similar rectangular frames. And the backgrounds look like a stage not a space.

When came to the 20th century, more British cartoons became featured and exaggerating with personal art style. The contents of the images had been from a wider range of areas, though many of them followed the function of a reflection of social and political issues and a sense of sarcasm. Additionally, materials used in these cartoons seemed to vary instead of only monochromatic or traditional pigments or tools. Some works are shown below.

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Last century, manga as a kind of entertaining media had flourished in the world, especially in America. Thus, the Cartoon Museum is collecting some wonderful mangas created by American cartoonists. Here, we can have a quick glance of some below.

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Some mangas inherited the black-and-white form and developed it as a more detailed expression of images. They can add more information while keeping the whole colours harmonious. Others attempted to be colourful and attractive, as colour televisions during that time. So they needed to avoid being a mess by colours. I cannot tell which style is more popular, because each of them has been successful around the world. And the stories in these mangas altered to be more surreal and sophisticated when they were getting inspirations from novels, documentaries and si-fi.

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There are three British authors’ works from our age, showing different explorations of the latest cartoons and mangas. We can see some of them tries to blur the clear definitions of the cartoon and manga. From my point of views, cartoon is strongly connected to the animation and also the illustration and the character would be the first essential element. While mangas rely more upon the paper, individual imaginations and stories. Basically, the fundamental elements remain the same. Therefore, the efforts of trying new access are meaningful.
Moreover, the British cartoon maintains the exaggerating style of old time and the sense of humour, even though it is still experiencing the hit of globalisation.

02/11/2019, Tate Modern

I have been to Tate Modern for the rest free exhibitions this week. From my view, it is very meaningful to trace the way of contemporary art and their exploration of new issues or movements. Western Arts, relying on the thoughts or technology revolution, sometimes have to delve into the separated factors behind the background. Therefore, I selected three directions of this show.

Modern Vision

This group of works reflecting the intensity of modern cities and the rapid pace of industrialisation like the high speed of transportation and information are all based on our visual functions. The artists put simplicity of geometries, reorganised shapes and blocks of colours into their abstract images and objects.

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The left one (Unique Forms of Continuity in Space, 1972) shows diverse contours of man’s exaggerated body towards the dynamic space. Lights here have been restructured and embodied into different layers. And these abstract sculptures may represent how fast the speed is with the body in modern society. And the right one (Paris, 1951) portrays a scene of Paris city by means of light and weak-contrasting colours rather than an absolute picture. The lines and planes used in this work create a platform with a light energy flowing in the space.

This one above (The Dinners, 1919) reveals the expression of the dynamic modern word that most people congregated there. The artist chose a corner of the restaurant reflecting one aspect of the modern life. We could see the colours are less contrasting and the people have muscle-like bodies. At a very special angle from the half sky, this painting also emphasises on the crowded modern life, even the dinner time that could not avoid such situations.

Feminism

This is an age for women. I have heard so many times of that similar words from different places. The female artists are the most vanguards of such conversion of values and movements. Here are some of their works below, and apparently, most of them aim to break the rigid recognition of female via showing their desires, sexual realisations and emotions from daily life.

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The one above reveals a religious understanding of female power. The artist researched hundreds of female images of God or admirations and collected them onto a huge format of collage. We could see a pyramid-like shape of this collection, and following the time, the primordial image flourished into diverse images of female, or mom in other words. The female artists are not only exploring the personal experience, but beginning to find the basic belief of feminism. It is a worthy attempt for women to get the clear recognition of themselves. But in my opinion, the spiritual world of women might be a more meaningful area to explore.

Media

Media and the network have become an inseparable part of our life, which are structuring our commonly virtual reality. This exhibition shows the artists’ thinking of these media and the information given via these media. And further more, we need to find out the problems behind some social phenomenons that we are inevitably confronting now.

The first is a group of screen collecting many quotations from artists. The second one is an installation of a tower made by thousands of audio machines from different times. They both reveal the impact of media on our human belief from visual and aural aspects which refresh our cognition of world every second. But these media and network as a physical access to the knowledge are so easy to be controlled by powers. How could we figure out the true reality behind the various information is still a question.

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This series of exaggerated works shown below is a good example of reflection of the distance between the news and facts. The artists adopted a style of sarcasm to depict each news as a comics like the animal-look people. From these impressive images, I could see a strong message that how ridiculous the events occurred under the organisation of political powers and misleading of the mass media like the war, terrorism and conflict of religions.

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Overall, these art works seem to portray our modern issues from the pace, female rights to the media influencing each individual every day. These issues are coming out with the industrialisation process and modern culture building process. However, we human as a part of nature cannot ignore the inadaptability of some aspects. In other words, we cannot betray our inherent essence. Therefore, these issues could be lasting effects in our daily life.

05/11/2019, Book Review

During my visit of Tate Modern, I was at the first time to directly touch Rothko’s artworks and get moved deeply by his huge paintings at an intimate distance. Subsequently, I bought Jacob Baal-Teshuva’s book Rothko in order to find the reason of the powerful impression of these works. From this book, I could have an overview of Mark Rothko (1903-1970), as known as a great influential painter and protagonist in the process completely revolutionising the essence and design of abstract painting in American modern art history, and his development of personal art style, art thinking and views.

Last century when the American art was dominated by two currents——Regionalists focusing on rural American population and Social Realism reflecting urban life of the Great Depression during postwar time of WWI——which both upheld a rather conservative attitude to figurative representation, the vanguard of abstract art who were inspired by exhibitions of Dada and Surrealism from Europe had begun their passion and enthusiasm even under a poor quality of life. Following the new trend, Rothko was regraded as a leader and pioneer of American abstract art group.

When I trace back to his birth in this book, I occasionally found that Rothko’s sophisticated childhood and teenager time had a deep impact on his final way towards art and emotions. Born as a Russia-Jewish (named Marcus Rothkovich) in a merchant family of a well-educated class (his father was a pharmacist) but experienced several immigrations during the turbulence of nations and anti-Jewishness, Rothko had to confront the hit from strictly religious education of Jew and later American culture shock as an immigrant when he was a kid. Although he acted very intellectually at school, he still became sensitive to the atmosphere of radical emotions——which are the most motif in his works.

Mark Rothko’s painting career can be divided into four period: the Realist years (1924-1940); the Surrealist years (1940-1946); the Transitional years (1946-1949); and the Classical years (1949-1970).

In his first stage after university studies and commencing art career in 1920s, Rothko was mainly inspired by two artists: Max Web, who taught still life and had an impressively romantic idealism emphasising the power of emotion and spirit——which opened Rothko’s mind of art representations and motif; and Milton Avery, known as “the American Matisse”, whose simplified forms, expressive application and thin layering of colour still exists in some of Rothko’s mature works. Like we could see in his subway series of paintings, Rothko used simplified colour fields as different architectural elements isolated or in couples, but all compressed to a nearly planar picture surface in order to draw the thorough urban or downtown space, and big city light. Based on his own story as a immigrant outsider looking at subway as a metaphoric place of alienation, of homelessness and of the ‘underworld’ of minds, Rothko chose an expression of cleanly figures from delimited spaces that seemed to be locked up or imprisoned in alternately channeled and obstructed space. Thus, these paintings are defined by expressive distortions with undertones of melodrama. And Rothko kept this kind of lyrical and mythical theme till the mid-1940s.

From the second period, Rothko suffered hard life of broken marriage and precarious financial problems under a conversing world where art group was fighting for independence and free expression away from nationalist, political, economic or historical issues dominating through war time. Therefore, he made a radical shift in the art style and went deeply into Greek myths and music. Rothko considered myths as an access to emotional roots which is effectively cross-cultural, including barbarism, pain, passions and violence as tragic phenomena. In terms of this point, Rothko renewed the interpretation of the “essence of the myth” and viewed observing art paintings as transporting prophetic or ethical messages. He also thought music to have same expressive power as abstract art. When influenced by Friedrich Nietzsche’s philosophy, Rothko took the visual dissolution of the human form and became totally saturated with colours, like music. He was soon affected by Clyfford Still’s picture of haunting, dim and raw, lacking any figuration, with large and unrefined fields of dark colour interspersed with a few patches shining bright, and plains in North Dakota. His shapes began to systematically eliminate any figurative elements in his paintings as “unknown adventures in an unknown space”.

The year 1946 was considered as a turning point in Rothko’s artistic career. From that year, Rothko’s art went into a crucial period named as his new series of pictures, the “multiforms”——which had a transition from pervious biometric forms to multifarious, blurred colour blocks without permanence or depth, and seeming to grow organically from inside the picture itself. He called these “organisms” full of the passion for self-expression. During the following winter, he reduced his physical objects to two or three rectangular and overlaid colour blocks. In order to creat a feeling of a mysterious quality and an intimate sense to humanity, Rothko chose a much larger format of his works and recommended an ideal distance of 45 centimetres in a dim environment that can make observers feel inside the picture. People can experience the colour blocks’ inner movement and absence of clear borders like two characters expanding outward in all directions or falling into dramatic conflict through the tension of contrasting colours. To some extent, it likes a tragic emotion within the tension of eruption, fixation and flotation.

Since 1950s, Rothko was exploring for forms owning life themselves, something beyond material boundaries and creating communication among basic human emotions. At the beginning, he preferred bright, radiating reds and yellows which brought a sensuous or even ecstatic feeling and a religious power into his works. In his words, his art is more alive and could breath than just being objects.

Although Rothko made a great breakthrough on his art, he lived up and down these years. He ended the friendship with Barnett Newman after an exhibition, which harmfully affected him deeply. Then he made another exhibition in 1958 as a vital step in the assertion of American painting in Europe, letting his works more valuable to the public. Meanwhile, he did some commissions about murals and one year later had a travel for recess. When came to the 1960s, many young artists imported British PoP Art and developed it into new, previously unseen forms in the USA. Due to its basis from the visual world of mass media and advertisement to be the commonplace, PoP Art subsequently gained widespread popularity, even though it was seen as a king of “anti-art” by the old New York School of Abstract Expressionists. Some such as Rothko criticised it with his angry conclusion.

During Rothko’s last two years of his life, he continued his art exploration of dark colours. In his opinion, Rothko wanted his paintings to be intimate and timeless. Hence, he placed his pictures (the Seagrams) together in one room in order to create a universe of stillness and lead visitors into an atmosphere of meditative contemplation and awe. Before his death of suicide, his last works appeared rigid, dark and hermetic, which seemed to reflect his innerself: despondent, depressive, frustrated, melancholic, lonely.

In conclusion, Mark Rothko’s touch of religious thoughts, and tragic experience of violent history and separated family all putted himself into a long-lasting pursuit of emotions, love and divine sense of the unknown, the God, in other words. These are all illustrated in his paintings. And his art world has a strong nexus with his spiritual world and real experiences.

5/10/2019 Tate Modern

Twenty century could be considered unstable and sophisticated in many aspects of human societies and countries being full of conflicts and wars. Different ideologies were enhanced to divide people into groups and confrontations that actually brought horrors and insecurity into social life. During that time, some artists were caring about the universal people, life and cities under the wars or postwar world. They seemed to try to explore the current politics, society, mass mentality and even some sharp issues including races and religions from that period by means of different angles and forms. Their works are collected in the Contemporary Art Exhibition of massive artworks in Tate Modern that I have visited, and are distinguished from other abstract artworks referring to nature and science. So I selected some of them into this review to discuss this serious topic.

Urban World

Monument for the living 2001-8 (2000, Marwan Rechmaoui) This grey sculpture represents a man-made high-rise building that could be found mostly dominant in the twentieth century’s west world. However, will it be timeless? It seems to return people’s thinking of living back to entities that embody life itself.

Demolished A, B and C part (1996, Rachel Whiteread) This is a group of captured photos showing the process of destruction for concrete buildings in the urban area. To some extent, the artist wished to record a kind of failure of the utopian optimism at a time of increasing social inequality.

Civil War

These works were the visual expression for the horror in civil wars world-widely going on last century. The left used fragmented body, mixtures of sharp space filled by cultural symbols and dark cold colours to reveal sense of death and coldness. And the right is full of facial distortions and unreal monsters which might represent horrors and struggled lives in the process of decolonisation. They were the result of exploration for personally and publicly spiritual issues under the war.

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Workers

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This work is a group of workers’ portraits photographed in black and white during the war time. these photos used mono colour to concentrate on their identities over diverse occupations and genders, and workers’ facial expressions.

Written History

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These two works seem to illustrate a deep illusion of historical information written by nonsensical signals. Our written history likes a paper filled by letters or dark digital screen recording simple numbers. Thus, it has brought a question to us: What is the meaning of these human-made records of real time?

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This is a hybrid art work using newspaper or magazines into cutting shapes and being stuck upon a surface of overlaid note papers in order to reveal a view from the author that the individuals were always under struggled and easily hurt by the historical information from mass media.

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This series of works appears to discuss a time for paper media when message or truth could be modified or entertained. The artist used the combination of historical objects or events with newspapers’ images to create a nexus between the grotesque phantasm produced by the mass and the real world.

Movements

Many kinds of movements flourished from that time when political powers were separated into different groups. Since then, some artists started to argue the basic structure of the society by means of comparisons of every single elements from these models provided by thinkers. Like the below one shows, they often used mechanically logical juxtaposition of pictures and words drawn on paper or a discussion recorded in the video. It seems that the artists want to reflect the objective reality, but from my perspective, I think there is a lack of nexus between these things.

World War II: Germany Section
These series of exhibitions below show a rethink of the battle of Germany part in World War Two. The artists adopted different materials and forms to remember such cruel and horrible war such as fabric, oil painting, ink and performing video. They chose different aspects of this war like the dates, images, the bloody flag and even the people’s faces.

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The most interesting thing among these works is the colour usage. We could see from the photos that they all put bright red into a monochromatic atmosphere in order to emphasise the bloody facts.

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Viewer

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War could be a long-lasting topic during the past. This video recorded a child using body language to describe a battle that he has seen by himself in the Middle East aside from any words. As audiences, we can tell more from a child’s depiction.

Africa

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This experimental animation above shows the history in the land of Africa, including the political revolution and racial pogrom. It combines live clips, abstract hand-drawing animation and the stop frames together. But the crucial part in this video is the mass media revealing the process of misleading the people and killing them spiritually and physically by monsters of media machines. In the end, this short film leaves a warning of the media and the controlling power behind them.

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This followed video explores the political frustrations and mental distress in the South Africa. The author, Penny Siopis, even asked many questions about the parliament in the regime itself. And does it really help the country? There is no answer given in this video. Or this is also the questions given to the public as well.

Immigration

The British Library, an exhibition of more than 6000 cultural books, aims to highlight the impact of immigration on British culture and invite people to join in the discussion of the hybrid cultures in the west. It is hard to say when is the end of the immigration, but different cultures and customs have been brought to the local. And there are some collisions from their traditional behaviour. So how to make a harmonious society will be the next issue for British people.

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Overall, these art works are discussing many issues or problems in the history, though no better answer had been given. While, we need to rethink and restructure the knowledge of the past because these are still relevant to each of us. History is made by people. When we have a dialogue with the past, we could look at the future and figure out the way to the future.

20/10/2019, Tate Modern

This weekend, I visited the Tate Modern again. There was a photography exhibition of a female free photographer, Nan Goldin, from the US. But I was told that people were not allowed to take any photos of them. What a pity, I just only recorded them in my mind.

Nan Goldin, born in 1950s, is an independent American photographer in a new age full of rights movements like LGBT, femaleness and even the sexual dependency. Most of her photos were shot in a style of snapshots by hands at any time and any places. The essential feature in her works is breaking the traditional structures of photography and contents of storytelling. And her option of using snapshots seems to bridge the gap between the serious arts from schools and universal life of individuals.

This exhibition showed some of Nan’s works starting with the Ballad of Sexual Dependency recording people’s private sexual lives and her own experience of violence and injuries with her husband. She framed lots of stark-naked people in private places like bed or toilet, and most of them are young men with addicted faces in the gathering. Moreover, some is showing her wound after a fight or something. From these works, she seems like to catch people’s facial expressions in any moment and angle without any designed framework of the photos, and showing people’s unveiled bodies directly to the audience. It is apparent that she is good at dealing with colours and use nuance on colours to create a harmonious vision.

Nan’s photography seems so close to the daily life in that age when modern lifestyle rebuilt young people’s values of living in many areas. For instance, loads of Americans were drawn to having fun like drugs, heavy metal music and sexual activities. These new entertainments could lead a mess at their mental worlds. It reveals that Nan’s camera just honestly captured these moments of crazy status or tired feelings. Her photos of violence are only part of such mess in the daily society.

Some critics might think Nan Goldin is like a rebel outside the classic school of photography and lacking the eyes of seeking positive mood in the life. While others thought this could be considered as a revolution of photography art. And moreover, she herself is a vital reflection of that age of modern. Personally, I think her exploration made sense on some level owing to some issues not being solved nowadays. Yer it is still difficult to judge her works because of the negative messages she wanted to send and the straight reality that she recorded by her camera.

5/10/2019

Modern Art was still kept away from me as a mystery when I was an undergraduate. So since I came to London, I decided to have a visit at Tate Modern Museum which is popularly known by collections of contemporary art.

Last century, modern art appeared some new developments of artworks’ purposes, making methods and the old position between authors and audiences in abstract art. When scientific researches had in-depth growths in more accurate areas, many young artists were stimulated and moved their interests to seeking for new contents of art. They also attempted to use highly abstract images and new media into artworks. This time, I chose some works referred to physically nature and sciences in forms or representations into several groups that I enjoyed in Tate Modern.

‘Programmed Art’

This kind of art started form 1960s, when a new group of international artists were sharing their talents on optical effects, geometry and objects’ movement via hybrid materials and renewing artworks’ values stopped being conventionally marketable luxury goods. They took ideas from some scientific breakthroughs like mathematics and colour theory, and new technologies like computers. According to artworks, they considered these as an interactive process where viewers can be an active participant rather than just a passive spectator, breaking the old concept of exhibitions. Personally speaking, their artworks as below are purer and have a strong association with sciences, in other words, less emotional.

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Indefinite Space S (1963), made by plastic sheets and arranged in regular structures, shows mixed geometric shapes in space, deliberately making it difficult to determine the certain positions and relations with these shapes, and its basic elements including square surface, line and point seem to be grounded on the fundamental structure of the cosmic space itself.

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Physichromie No. 113 (1963), can be seen as an experiment of illusion from sights and changed positions resulting in different colours and images, attracting viewers’ participations and interactions.

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Suasum (1965), focuses on light movement and changing perceptions by viewers, blended with cubes on a flat and curved surfaces in each, and a variation of colours from black edges to white center in order to create a vision of dark-to-light movement. When I was stand in front of it, I was able to see a simplified light world from a reflection of our reality.

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Surface IX (1962), is a square wooden relief composed by several equal-size wood slats juxtaposed on different horizontal level but all painted in black, seeming to create an uneven surface. And the light reflection showed in a range of colour changes which I could see as a sense of rhythm or movement. There is no more meaning about each single slat. Additionally, they all serve the whole.

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a no. 1~7 (1962-1964), is a series of artworks from the visual culture project in Croatia, when one of designers and editors is the same artist as Surface IX. These works concentrating on visual issues by means of images, light and colours, could be seen as a typical reflection in ‘Programmed Art’ for their pure target of optical effects based on sciences.

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Other artworks from these international artists also reveal these simple but fully experimental and interactive thoughts like colour movement, lines continuity and shadows.

‘White’

This group of artworks have a sense of ‘white’ in common as a purity and absence of colours from nature. White seemed to be recognized as a spectacular colour in history, bringing lots of social meanings. But here, artists only chose white to be a strong expression of art issues, and with this power of simplicity they putted their concentration on spirits, social emotions or researches of abstract and natural concepts shown in some artworks below.

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Ledger (1982, left) is an uneven flat with the combination of lines, shadow and geometries in repetition. Artist painted it as a white whole which enabled him to draw attention to its other qualities like subtle variation between shapes, angles and vision.

And Achrome (1958, center) is more like a square relief built by China clay placed in square or rectangular shapes. This object can reveal a sense of heavy in white itself by the work of shadows and lights, without other interrupted senses from colours.

But the right one Holes (1954) made by painted newspapers with some penetrated holes shows more details in similar colours. These colours help to create a balance between destructive and creative action, trying to reflect an ambivalence of Japanese in the wake of World War II.

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White Curve (1974), a large-size work of an extremely pure geometry between painting and sculpture, drawn from an observation of natural and man-made environment but highly simplified by the author who is seeking a vague border between two-dimension and three-dimension space.

‘Colours’

Colour is a significant notion extracted from traditional drawing elements by modern artists. They focused on researching the impact of colour itself and the relationship with humans in emotions, history and vision. This group of artworks below reveal several aspects of this impact from colours’ power.

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This group of artworks work on monochromatic colours within different geometric shapes that could strengthen different senses of feeling or mood from colours. For instance, the left painting shows a series of three quasi-concentric squares in varying shades of blue which transforms from central blue-green to a darker and more muted one, then a bright blue on edges. By means of optical effects, this work attracts viewer’s eyes on the central colour. And the central one is a sharp and subtly curved triangle in light yellow, to some extent, possibly bringing more active or aggressive feelings like happy or angry. Then the right one is a whole bright navy-blue square like the ocean or universe, somehow revealing a feeling of peace and mystery to hearts.

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These two paintings like using plenty of colorful lines in visual studies of colour movement. The left painting draws an unreal space like an illusion of water moving, so when I stood in front of it, I could feel the power full of energy and light. Similarly, the right one is composed of linear lines, and the colours are more gay and distinguishing.

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History Paintings (1995), is an experiment that explores the history of colour pigments that represents a period of time. Artist made six different monochromatic colours grouped into six historical periods: (left to right) Cave, Egyptian, Greek, Italian, 18th and 19th century. These look more like a chronologically historical process of modern civilisation or western civilisation. But when take a close look, I found more subtle mixtures or tiny spots on each painting where the variations could point out more concrete meanings of objects or circumstances than just a history.

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Colour Cycle III (1970), is a hybrid artwork made by canvas and three diachronic lamps which can create a sequence of coloured lights by time. It was viewed in a darkened room in order to produce a series of colour transformation. And each morphed optical movement likes a radical transformation in illusion.

Overall, it is a short but impressive trip about new contents of abstract art which seems, personally, to be an important part of Modern Art. Until today, it has brought lots of inspirations in a variety of areas. And the studies about objects, sciences and optics continue working nowadays, which can provide more angles of real world.

1/10/2019, CSM Animation Studio

In the beginning of the Character Animation course in the Central Saint Martin in London, our tutor Steve introduced sand animation practice to us. It was my first time touching sand animation. Because there was no keyframes drawn ahead, we need to choose one inspiration from given pictures and morph the images and shapes of the sand frame by frame. Initially, as working in groups, we selected a picture of a huge black egg hiding a boy inside in front of a tiny bird and discussed a short story from it: an egg left from a leaving bird cracks and breaks into several parts, then a boy stands from inside the egg and his hands transform into a bird’s wings. Eventually, the boy flys into the sky and goes away like a bird.

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We used dragonframe to frame them one by one and edited these photos in the computer. The final video lasts for more than 1 min.

Sand is an unstable material that can easily change itself. When I was moving the sand shape, I realised that sand animation needs sensitive touching due to this property. And it is best thinking the mature version of images before you move the sand. Additionally, sand animation seems to be a more freehand style of art, and could be added into the animation like puppet animation or stop frame. Maybe I can consider this kind of style in my own animation film in the future.

It is useful getting to know different styles and materials of animation such as sand and digital softwares. That did open my eyes and broke the limits of paper using.