My Kid Could Paint That

Bruce Davidson received national attention for his photography at the young age of 19, after winning a Kodak film contest for a picture of an owl. This first step began a long run of work documenting communities, particularly in New York, and social strife. His work during the summer of 1965 documented the Civil Rights Movement just before Voting Rights Act. This body of work perhaps has gained the most notoriety out of any other artist covering that monumental event.

BY MADELINE VASQUEZ 

Morris Louis was known for his immense amount of work within the world of Color Field painting. Towards the beginning of his career as an artist, he had not yet found his style and drew odd sketches of figures and painted people. Around the mid-1950’s, his inspiration from Rothko, Pollock, Newman, and others, allowed him to realize that he loved the idea of free-flowing color and tonal relations. He said, "The more I paint the more I'm aware of a difference in my approach and others. Am distrustful of over-simplifications but nonetheless think that there is nothing very new in any period of art: what is true is that it is only something new for the painter and that this thin edge is what matters." 

He worked with the the three styles of Abstract Expressionism, Color Field Painting, and Lyrical Abstraction. From these styles he created a five series grouping of his works in which each we called, Veil, Floral, Unfurled, Stripe, and Column. Between 1955 and 1957 he ended up destroying a lot of his paintings, but continued to work on and complete the Veil series shortly after. 

Louis’s Delta Theta is one of his most famous and recognizable works of art in his Unfurled series. He was known for altering the canvas he used, so for this he folded the canvas and then poured different colors of acrylic down the sides to create the dripping effect. By not using up the whole canvas, Louis took on the amazing concept of pictorial space and how an artist does not need to cover the whole canvas.

Bright, pink light. It blinds you, but it also draws it in. It’s like opening your eyes in the morning. It’s like a deep pink sunset. It’s the white like that peaks out from magic door #1, #2, and #3. Which one will you choose? Which door holds the bright white light of your dreams? Walking inside a James Turrell exhibit is like opening that magical door.

Raemar Pink White is a shallow space construction piece by James Turrell. For these pieces, Turrell makes small architectural modifications to create a space that is then filled with light. A shallow space construction piece is viewed from the rear of a large room which controlled lighting challenges the viewer’s depth perception.

James Turrell, the King of Light. For years Turrell has been taking viewers on a journey of self discovery as they rediscover light and their surroundings. Turrell is one of the first artists to look deeply at light and use it as a medium for art. Turrell focuses on the sensory experiences of light and “he creates opportunities for viewers to experience light as a primary physical presence rather than as a tool with which to see or render other phenomena.” By isolating light he pushes viewers to think about the properties of light itself by examining transparency, volume, and color.

I think Turrell resembles Rothko, if Rothko used light. He creates huge pieces covering walls with bold and bright colors. The colors engulf you. The colors and the light is all that you see, but you feel the movement of the light too.

I was fortunate to visit a Turrell exhibit at the LACMA in 2014, but that was before I took art history. Unfortunately, I walked through the exhibit without the knowledge to understand the genius of Turrell. But, I do not think that took away too much from the exhibit. Even without knowing Turrell’s motives as an artist, I still felt the light, movement, and color. It’s not always about understanding art, as much as feeling the art. Turrell’s works prove that art is about feeling, seeing, and learning.

Three years after painting Flag and White Flag, Jasper Johns created my personal favorite among his works: Three Flags. The painting is technically fantastic with clean lines, hues of time-faded white fabric, and unbelievable depth extracted from an object as flat as a flag. The painting jumps out at you—flies into your personal space—and has a freshness in its style. With stars and stripes on stars and stripes on stars and stripes, one can see nothing but good old-fashioned patriotism. So that was Johns's goal, right? Good. Simple analysis—moving on.

Surprisingly, love/hatred of America was not the idea behind the work. During the first part of his career, Johns used "concrete" subjects—familiar items from everyday life—to withdraw emotion from his paintings. Since they already feel comfortable with the image in front of them, viewers feel an automatic association with Johns's works.

The emotional response elicited by Three Flags also results from the highly symbolic nature of its subject matter. Observers' reactions differ dramatically based on their national allegiance and the point in time at which they view the painting. For any person, though, it is difficult not to have personal experiences tied to a symbol as omnipresent as the American flag. Although he tried to remove emotion by using clear, tangible objects, Jasper Johns created a highly affecting piece with Three Flags, whose simplicity generates ever-changing reception.

About 5 years ago, I was an avid reader of the web-comic Incidental Comics. In one particular comic titled "Self Portrait" Grant Snider features a man attempting to paint himself in the styles of various artists. The last one (pasted below) is in the style of Chuck Close.  

Clyfford Still, PH-118, 1947

By SAI GONDI

Simple subjects caught the eye of Morandi as the majority of his subject matter includes bowls, vases, flowers, landscapes and bowls. Born in Bologna, Italy, Morandi never really travelled very far. The influences of his heritage greatly influenced him. As a soft-spoken recluse, many called him 'il monaco,' meaning the monk. His fame went from provincial, to national rather quickly due to his immense talent. Surely his vast amount of works included what seems to be the same vases and bowls and to that thought you would be indefinitely correct. Morandi would take jars, bottles and vases and remove all labels in which he would then have an unlimited amount of easily accessible subjects that he could arrange and rearrange. His drive for purity and perfection landed him as the master of natura morta of the 20th century.

Still Life 1955 exists as one of the hundreds of stills lifes completed in Morandi's lifetime. The use flat colors and neutral earth tones reoccur endlessly. Like many other pieces, this painting alludes to the ever so present Italian heritage embedded in mind. Morandi draws from the breathtaking Medieval architecture present in not just all of Italy, but particularly in his hometown, Bologna. Similarly to 18th century still life master, Chardin, Morandi looks at all subject matter with fresh eyes. His repetition and focus on the same objects is allowed due to this prospective. "I am essentially a painter of the kind of still life composition that communicates a sense of tranquility and privacy, moods which I have always valued above all else." This calm mood continues throughout all his works as his patience and perfectionism lands him at the top tier of natura morta.

By EMMA SHAPIRO

When I was in the fourth grade and still believed in magic, my friend Emma and I decided God had given us special powers -- a certain clairvoyance, a capacity for truth -- which would enable us to save the world. We did not know what, exactly, we were to save the world from, but this seemed irrelevant at the time. We felt important, and thus we were happy. The evidence was everywhere. First there was the large stick from the playground -- creatively dubbed "The Stick" -- which appeared to be covered with ancient hieroglyphs. I still remember those meaningless squiggles. They were uncommonly beautiful. Next there was the wind in the grass, which I thought nothing of until Emma convinced me each ripple was really the footstep of an angel. Her mother had told her this, and Emma's mom was my English teacher, so of course I trusted them both. But I would not have believed as strongly in our game as I did if it hadn't been for the eyes. One Wednesday afternoon when we were looking for God, Emma pointed at the sky and said, "It's Him! He's watching us!"

I had no idea what she was talking about, so she pulled me closer and aligned my gaze with her finger. One of the clouds was not a cloud. It was a gigantic eye made of cloud-bits. Thus began the strangest and most glorious phase of our self-aggrandizing fanaticism. We saw eyes everywhere. I especially recall how we scoured the bricks on the back of the school with the palms of our hands, feeling for little craters, which we always found. We were ecstatic, waiting for a message that never came; we said that God was "everywhere and nowhere at all," our first foray into philosophy. Then it ended. I do not know when, or even if, I stopped believing in God, but a creeping sense of shame told me the game itself was fake, like the feeling you get when you first contemplate the impossibility of Santa Claus. Emma and I grew apart. We turned to books and love for answers, with varying degrees of success. (My first crush is now-- horrifyingly-- a senior at Pembroke.) Even the allure of our favorite stories and hopeless romances paled in comparison to our self-imposed holiness. This is why I have chosen Jackson Pollock's Eyes in the Heat-- because it brings back all the mystery and excitement of when Emma and I went looking for God on the playground.

Pollock toys with the mind's tendency to seek out facial features. We naturally detect faces on the fronts of cars and in outlets for three-pronged plugs; here, we find eyes in vague, loping ellipses.

Some shapes in Eyes in the Heat are clearly more eye-like that others, and once the mind is primed, we find new eyes in the slightest indications of roundness. Even knowing the title changes what the viewer finds; I would like to have two people look at this painting for twenty seconds-- telling only one person the title-- and then ask them what they saw. Eyes in the Heat shows how truly arbitrary artistic meaning can be and emphasizes the importance of the subconscious and the power of belief in our everyday quest for truth.