Collage!

right side

left side

So a quick rundown of my collage: top right I cut strips of me in my uniform for tennis and my birthday party with my friends and mixed them together. Basically my friends & family and tennis are what take up much of my time and they are pretty mixed together. The picture of me playing with the writing on it is just me being nit-picky about myself and my tennis. A lot of the times I do it when its not even appropriate and I get mad at myself too often. The quote on the bottom right, "We avoid risks in life, so we can make it safely to death" makes me think a lot about how I'm sometimes too timid, and I need to get out and be more aggressive with things. The picture of my friend in the middle of the lights is my friend Preston who got me into my obsession with raves and gloving. The picture of the eagle with the man arms is an inside joke I have with my close friends, and the picture with "I'm not doing shit today" is a feeling that I get a lot....now whether it's an appropriate feeling is another story haha. Then on the left is the blurry photo of me with my friends, and I wrote "Sometimes the shitty photos are the best photos", because every time I look at this picture it reminds me of all the great times I've had with those people, the fact that it's blurry kind of adds to that whole effect for me. In the center is a picture of me with my best friend, I didn't really feel like I needed to do anything to that picture.

A Distorted Perception of Beauty

The lecture retaining to beauty had some very interesting points that really made me think. What I liked about the lecture a lot what the discussion about how our idea of beauty doesn't really seem very realistic. Watching that Dove commercial, the girl had to be modified with make-up and hairspray, and on top of that some graphic artist ends up modifying her picture in a way that makes her neck and face look longer, as well as blowing her eyes up to almost alien proportions. Now, is that what we perceive as beautiful? Is that what every woman wants to look like? Because they simply can't do it when people are made to look like Greek gods. Our idea of beautiful is something foreign to the human race, something that can never be reached by normal means. Because of this, many people feel depressed when they see billboards and pictures of these flawless individuals wearing the latest trends, because they always tell themselves that they'll never be that beautiful. On the contrary, those people are more beautiful than anything else in the world, physical beauty is a minute and shallow portion of true beauty. There are so many more factors that are a part of beauty all of which we should be focusing on rather than trying to look like something that is not "us".

In conclusion, once we get past the idea that beauty is all physical, society will be able to progress in a different direction, although I don't know what direction that will be, society as a whole will be enlightened. We'll be able to put our insecurities aside and just be ourselves.

Nikki S. Lee

From the Skateboarders Project

My artist is Nikki S. Lee, a photographer born in 1970. Although she is Korean, it doesn't seem like that has held her back from being an active member in about every social class/culture known to man. Nikki Lee is probably one of the most dedicated photographers I've seen out there, in that she studies the group of people she intends to interact with, then she imitates their style of dress,  their gestures, postures, and then basically integrates into the subculture. She makes it aware to them that she is an artist, however whether they take it seriously or not is another story.

From the Hispanic Project

As a photographer, she is unique in that she isn't the one actually taking the photographs, instead she has someone else do it for her and they take pictures upon request by her. Doing what is "normal" or "routine" for these people, she has this person take photographs of her with these people, doing everything she can to blend in with them. Many of the photographs are shot in an "amateur" form so as to seem normal, something that a person would see in their everyday life, something that
maybe you or I would be able to relate to in some way.

The Hip Hop Project

As I've noticed in many of these photos, although you can pick out where she is in the photos, she blends in well with each ethnic group or subculture she is in. Whether she uses make-up a certain way or dresses a different way or acts a different way it shows her dedication to seriously entrenching herself in the lifestyle of whatever group of people she happens to be around. Reading about her I thought she was a great example of an Identity artist, someone who makes you question whether or not you are who you from the group of people you are with. Is it that, or is it how you define yourself through that group of people? Do you blend in with the rest of them, or try to stand out in your own way? In Nikki's case, through the use of her photography she uses blending in as a way of standing out, by exploring all these cultures and immersing herself in them it brings about a new level of understanding to her that most people on this Earth don't have about other people. She understands their likes, dislikes, as well as why they may discriminate towards another group of people, and then as well as that group of peoples point of view. It really makes you think. She also came out with something called Parts, snapshots of her with a man, however the man is cut out for the most part.

While some seem pretty normal and out of the ordinary, others kind of make you do a double take and think to yourself, "whats going on here?" Either way, Nikki S. Lee is a very unique artist, using culture as her driving force in her art. Whether she's a lesbian, a hispanic, a skateboarder, a redneck, whatever, she completely commits to it for a period of time and it brings about a form of education that only she can truly understand, and that people can discuss about through her photos.

LACMA

Going through the LACMA was a huge change from when we had gone to the Norton Simon. The area was enormous, with several buildings holding different kinds of art ranging from paintings to sculptures to old historic civilization war masks and egyptian talismans.

This really caught my attention, simply just because it stood out so well in the middle of this big empty area, and once it got darker it really looked just that much more amazing. I don't know if this was the intention for this piece but it does a great job of marking where to walk when you are looking for the entrance, same as when you leave since the museum is so big it seemed like there were 10 different front entrances. What I liked most about it was that it seemed like it belonged there, it didn't seem  like it shouldn't have been there and I liked that it was unique yet it blended in well with the area.

I went through quite a few buildings, however the entire hour we were there it didn't seem like we had covered nearly as much ground as we thought we had because there was this whole other side of the museum we hadn't stepped into, and we didn't even realize this until we had walked out and went "dam dude theres that whole other building we didn't even step into". But either way the experience was great, I actually almost thought I had wasted my 10 dollars in the museum because there was nobody that actually took your ticket when you walked in, then I realized that the people standing around are super anal about making sure you have your ticket with you so that was a relief.

This was created in 1919 in Germany, with no real author as its artist is titled Anonymous. The text, translated from German, says "So Spartacus leads you! Brothers, save our revolution!". As revolution propaganda, the art is so dark and sadistic its much more unique from what you would think of as something to spark a revolution. It reminded me of some kind of Halloween poster, with Death holding a sickle walking around surrounded by bats in this crazy atmosphere. Looking back on these photos of the paintings, I realized that the more gruesome paintings caught my eye. Yea there were many great paintings of boring naked women who were supposed to resemble Greek goddesses, but I've seen all that before. These crazier paintings I haven't, probably because they try to keep you away from that when you're younger, they're not exactly going to show you a painting of the Spanish Inquisition when you're in elementary school.

This one is titled Suicide at Dawn by Victor Brauner. I was disappointed when I read the description because all it gave me was a list of people who contributed funds to help buy the painting and I wanted to know what the artist was thinking when he went out of his way to paint such an interesting piece. It almost seems like the individual in the painting is literally breaking free of his skin, however it doesn't make sense that the figure coming out of the naked ghost-like figure with the white eyes has skin from the waist down and seems to be without skin from the waist up after cutting through the stomach of the white figure. Either way, this painting stood out to me and I took a couple minutes to look at it, which is pretty long in my standards.

I couldn't even get the whole of this enormous painting in the picture, but that is Torsten acting like a freak next to me for some reason haha. Anyway this piece was is titled Burn, Baby, Burn by Roberto Matta. This painting was dedicated towards the Watts riots in 1965 in Los Angeles, when a California highway patrol motorcycle officer pulled over a black man on charges of drunk driving, which erupted into a racial debate among the citizens of LA. Eventually they began protesting which erupted into the riots. "Burn, Baby, Burn is a powerful indictment of the destructiveness of mankind and a manifesto for peace." I enjoyed the painting a lot because it did a good job of giving you this sense of chaos and destruction that had occurred back then. No law, no order, just chaos. That's what went through my head when I saw this painting.

This is titled Landscape in Red (Paisaje en rojo) by David Alfaro Siqueiros. The deep, dark red really made me do a double take, and I looked at the painting for a while wondering whether it was supposed to be a fire or some kind of massacre, yet its titled Landscape in Red, so it confused me, yet I still felt really drawn to the piece. The artist was known for doing pieces on political activism, so I'm not sure what sort of political meaning this had however I know that it does leave an impact on the viewer, when they're so used to seeing pretty colors and being almost numbed by them, they get to see something like this that makes them look again and go wow whats this all about.

This was also pretty cool they had another one on the other side of the room.











As a whole, the LACMA visit was a huge success, I learned a lot about art, and I also learned a lot about my taste in art, which I thought was the most significant.

New Blogger Account

Hey guys, finally switched over to blogger...will be posting more stuff about the LACMA and other stuff soon!