Salvador Dali

I chose 3 different paintings from Dali as he was an artist i researched into well for my first decade of 1930's-40's. I really admired his work and him as a person and thought his eccentric ways were something really worthwhile to aspire to and many people did as he influenced so many artists around him.

Although he didn't do many protraits, i still managed to find 3 different ones that i could end up portraying for my final image. One was Figure At Table (portrait of my sister) 1925.

I think the painting has been beautifully done and it's nice to see Dali create something real. The subject in the painting is his sister, and she is posing quite naturally. The way she has her head on the hand and is looking down at her other which seems to be agitated, could show that she is in deep thought about something. A lot of emotion is shown in this picture, and it appears she could be nervous, upset or just in deep thought.

Also the wrap that is around her body is blue, which symbolizes calmness, wisdom and relaxation, like the ocean which is a big symbol for the colour blue. This comes across quite well in the photo as the pose that the model is doing does reflect on the calm relaxed moods of the colour blue, where as blue can also mean depression and sadness and mourning, which I think again the pose compliments, so there are quite a few different meanings to this photo and it can be portrayed in lots of different ways depending on who looks at it in different ways.

There is also a white cloth laying next to the model, I'm not to sure of the significance of this, although looking back to my colour phycology research the colour white symbolizes purity and innocence, so Dali could have been trying to put across these emotions also when placing the white cloth next to his sister in the picture.

The back ground is quite shadowy and blurred, the colour is dark and subdued making the model stand out a lot more which i think was taken into consideration when Dali painted this. His sister is leaning against a light browny grey table, there isn't much to the background at all but i think that's done on purpose as the moods and pose of the model can be clearly shown even more.

At the time, surrealism was just getting very popular with the public and that was the main art movement at the time. I wouldnt say this painting relates to surrealism, but i think that again was done on purpose as almost all of dalis painting, films, photos and life was based around surrealism so for him to do a painting totally unrelevant to his surrealist work was very different for him and his works and could have been because he had painted a family member.

I think he aimed this photo at no one other than his sister, he did quite a few paintings of her and also his brother who had passed away, so i thnik the target market will have been his family members.

Thomas Hart Benton

Thomas Hart Benton is another srtist i didn't actually research in either of my two decades, ahtough he did a lot of work through each of my decades and did a a fair few portraist so i decided to look at some of his work. He was an american painter and muralist and he was at the forefront of the regionalist art movement. Most of his paintings showed everyday scenes of life in the US.

The painting i chose was a portrait of a lady, although I'm yet to find out the name and year of the painting i think it's interesting and shows a lot of meanings.

I think the mood of this photo is quite subdued, flat and the model looks almost disinterested. The colours are quite dark which can symbolize sadness, anger and hurt, and the facial expression of the model is also quitesad and withdrawn looking.

The lady is holding her hat in her han, sat down and looks like she is wearing fur or maybe velvet, this could symbolize wealth as her hair and shirt underneath also look quite expensive and classy, so the artist could have been trying to show wealth as the coat being worn also has a lot of volume.

The background is quite dull in colour and a faint print can be seen on the right side of the model which indictaes it could be wallpaper of some sort in the background. The pose of the model is quite slouched and compliments her facial expresions.

Leopald Wachtler

Another artist i looked at was Leopald Wachtler, I didnt research him in my historuical brief although he did work throughout both of my decades. There was one painting i liked that stood out to me most, although i couldnt find the name of it;
Original pastel painting,  third quarter 20^th century, signed Leopold Wächtler

In my opinion, this painting is skillfully exicuted and it appears that a lot of time and effort has gone into it. The subject in the painting is dressed in blue, and according to my phycology of colour research, blue indictates calmness and wisdom, and the facial expressions on the lady reflect on this a lot.

Although the colour blue can also indicate depression and  a deep sadness, so the artist could maybe be trying to portray that there are two differet sides to the lady which appears to be quite happy in the photo, but could be deeply hurt or upset deep down, this is showing that there could be a hidden meaning to the message the photo is trying to portray.

The mood of the photo is relatively nice and warm, due to the colours and the facial expressions of the lady, i think the mood is quite peacefull and calm. The lady is holding a flower. Different flowers symbolize different meanings, but flowers in general can be a sign for love, peace and happiness. Although flowers can also mean the total opposite to that, taking into considereation her facial expressions and the colours she is wearing, then i definitely think the flower is symbolizing only good things.

The background is muted and dark, making the subject and garment and colours stand out a lot more and become very apparent in the photo. Another thing i noticed are that the ladies eyes are very strong and piercing and look as if they are following you around the room, eyes are full of emotions and say a lot about you as a person, so the artist making the ladies eyes so sharp shows that he wanted to show emotions and different feelings within them.

Andy Warhol's BLONDIE

Andy Warhol was one of the artists i researched for one of my decades. He lived through 1928-1987. He was an American painter, printmaker and filmmaker who was a leading figure in the visual art movement known as pop art. He was known worldwide for his work as a painter, avant-garde filmmaker, record producer, author and member of highly diverse social circles that included bohemian street people, distinguished interlectuals, hollywood celebrities and wealthy patrons.

This is one of the pieces by Andy Warhol that I've chosen to maybe use for my final photo.

The mood of the photo is quite provaocative at first sight, but it also has an essence of fun. The way the models lips are very red and she has bright blue eyes staring straight into the camera. The photo comes across as being quite sexual. The subject as i said before in the painting is blondie. Blondie was an american rock band, founded by Deborah Harry, who is in the photo and was often refered to as 'Blondie'.

She was a huge style icon of her time and dressed very punky, which was a big fashion craze at the time of when the band were most popular in the mid 70's, so Warhol choosing her as a model to do his picture of her wasn't a shock, as he was often very interested in style icons and famous people at the time and has done many works depicting different celelbrities faces.

A lot of attention has been applied to her facial features, like her lips and eyes which again can be symbols of a sexual nature. Her hair and eye makeup has been editied to look purple which is a symbol for femininity and confidence, and this definitely comes across in the image. Lots of block colours have also been used in the picture as well, which makes parts of the image really stand out.

At the time, pop art was very popular and as a lot of the art showed off brands, like the famous campbells soup can that Warhol did, lots of modern people could really relate to this modern art as they wanted to be on trend and have all the new uo to date brands, also people looked up to style icons like blondie so i think they could definitely relate to this photo.

Le ballon rouge..

So our second shoot we did was to be inspired by the short film i blogged about earlier called le ballon rouge. This time we had a week to plan it, so it was a lot easier to sort out everything we wanted to do and really think about the whole entire look and prospect of it all.

We had loads of different ideas and after playing around with a few and analyzing which ones worked best, we decided to go with an 'alter-ego' type story. As there was 4 of us in a group, we decided we would show 2 different alter egos, someone who is two faced, and someone who is secretly shy and insecure. We wanted to keep the shoot quite youthful and fresh and young to reflect the feel to the film, but also make it slightly sinister and eery with the alter egos.

We did a 4 model shot, as me and sophie were posing as the 'boy' in the shot, we were laughing and talking together, while our alter egos posing as the 'balloon' in the shoots were looking dark and gloomy in the background. We also did shots in pairs, to try and get across our idea.

I think it worked really well, the colours we used were good as well as me and sophie were dressed in pastelly french colours, and our alter egos dressed in black dark muted colours to show the contrast in emotion. The only thing is the background, i think we need to photoshop a few objects out of it as we just used the college as our scenery, and maybe put more light on me and sophie and more shadows on the alter egos.

Here are a few shots from the shoot, the origional ones we chose will be on soon!

EXPLOSION!

We've just started our new brief.. STYLING! As i used to be a hairdresser i did quite a bit of work with styling then and i really enjoyed it.. so gotta say i was really looking forward to our first shoot!

We were given the word 'explosion' and we had to style a shoot to try and portray that word as best we can, it didnt have to be really specific so we decided to go down the root of a 'half and half emotional explosion', where we had me as the model, half of me was the explosion to show that there are 2 sides to every person. It was so much fun doing all the styling and EVERYTHING had to be taken into consideration, including hair, makeup, backdrop, pose, lighting and editing etc and it was so hard as we only had a night to plan it all! But that considered i think we did pretty well.. here are some of the photos to show our ideas.. the final photo will be up soon!