Thursday, November 15, 2012

Writing assignment for Color Bind

Please pick three pieces tomorrow at the Color Bind exhibition and post on the class blog 1000 words on the following questions for our next class on Nov 30th after the holiday (you can use microsoft word to check your word count):

As we've discussed, limiting color use (creating conceptual and aesthetic restraints) is one of the major strategies artists use color to propel meaning forward.

1.   Fully describe each piece trying to describe the color and material use for someone who hasn't seen the artwork.  Fully describing an artwork is an essential component of analyzing it.  Please avoid generic adjectives like interesting, powerful, etc.  Be inventive, make your reader feel the aesthetic qualities of the piece.  If an artist is only using white, what kind of white are they using?  What other colors seem to be present in the white?

2.   Color is relative--color changes depending on the colors present adjacent and/or near.  Discuss how the piece is influenced by color relativity not only within the piece, but due to the colors of the instutional walls, floor, and lighting as well.

3.  Color is symbolic.  What associations are brought up by the artist's use of color?  From Naomi's text:
...artists intentionally use specific techniques combined with a black-and-white palette as a method of introducing social and ethical dimensions into art practice. For instance, Raymond Pettibon, Marlene Dumas, and Howardena Pindell appropriate the inky form of newspapers and comic books as a way to comment on conflict and violence. Kara Walker adopts nineteenth-century silhouette forms to present racially exaggerated bodies, and Glenn Ligon, who does the same in his print series, also uses the monochrome canvas in his paintings as both a metaphor and a foil for depictions of race.
Use your own ideas to further unpack the symbolic and associative ramifications of each artists formal strategies...

4.  Assess each piece on a continuum to problematic to successful.  You may decide to pick a piece that for a number of reasons is not compelling.  Use your own ideas to discuss why an artist may have missed an opportunity to create more meaning.  We learn just as much from discussing a piece we don't like as one we love, sometimes we learn the most from the works we despise!

Looking forward to reading these on Nov 30th!

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