ABC3D book

each page is brilliant! using so many tricks in one book

What can I do?

Few days since the disaster hit Japan.

A lot of people dead and there're so many people waiting for help under the cold night.
People there lost their town, houses, friends, family and their smiles.

I'm thinking what I can do for them from here...from London.
If there is something I can do, to give them some energy to confront the tragedy....
If I could do something with art, it would be really fantastic....

Peepshow

Today I went to National Gallery because I remember that there was a illusion box using same idea as 'specific view point' and some tricky paintings there.

'A peepshow with views of the interior of a Dutch house'

This painted box done by Samuel van Hoogstraten was made in 17th century. There are two peepholes on each side of the box and the view from the holes gives an illusion of a three dimensional image of interiors in the painted room inside.

Using box to give people specific view...humm

This is other really famous painted illusion using the same idea.

Holbein, 'Double portrait of Jean de Dinteville and Georges de Selve'

In the bottom of the painting, there is a skewed skull almost impossible to recognize it is it. But you see it from nearly side(right side, when you face it) of the painting, you can see accurate shape of human skull.

A problem is I have no skill to realize these kinds of illusion. It could be possible of I use photoshop, but I don't really want to depend on technology...

Anyway, there was one more purpose to come here, to see Turner's paintings.
I love paintings of Turner because of its use of colour and subjects in paintings, sky and sea.
They just make me feel relaxed deeply. I used to go to National Gallery just to look at them.
They made me relaxed as always for these busy days.


Finally I got offers from all 4 colleges I applied to, surprisingly.
I got into Chelsea, Camberwell, LCC, and Kingston.
In my mind, a present order is this: Chelsea > Kingston > LCC > Camberwell.
Chelsea, I like the atmosphere here. The only problem is that they don't have print press.
And this is for all the UAL colleges, I feel like they just let me in because I'm international.
I'm not really sure if they liked my works and thought they want me in.
This is the reason why I put Kingston for the second place.
Well, the dead line is 5th of May. I still have time to think about my final choice.

Antony Gormley, "One and Other"

In today's English class, I studied about "The 4th plinth in Trafalgar Square."
The space on the plinth was empty for long periods but now it is a location for contemporary art works of leading London artists.

In 2009, Antony Gormley, a sculptor, took a place for the show on the plinth.
At that time I visited London for the second time by chance, and had taken photos of the show.

A man reading a book is just sitting on the plinth.

It was called "One and Other." Gormley's proposal for the show was that the plinth was occupied 24 hours a day by the general public who volunteer to stand on it for one hour. The show lasted 12 months, had 8,000 people stood on the plinth. When I saw it, the person on the plinth was doing nothing, but basically people who stand on the plinth could do anything they want, so some had speech to the audience and the other dressed fancy dress. He said it was about "diversity, vulnerability and the individual in modern society" because of the place, Trafalgar Square's military history and statues which honour specific war heroes.

Because I'm now working on FMP, I got it little bit differently.
The idea of placing real-life people instead of statues is reversing of general idea.
What I meant general is that people make statues of people, so normally people came first then statues were made after that. But in this case, Statues came first and then people were placed after that.
I think it is related to the idea of Alexa Meada that making real-life people into painting instead of making realistic painting, reversing idea.

Well, even if he didn't think in that way(probably not), today's study gave me an idea of doing reversing, doing something opposite makes it more interesting.

Alexa Meade

Alexa Meade is an installation artist based in Washington D.C.
She is also one of the artists who use illusion for her work.

First of all, look at her works.

They might look like just nice pieces of painting.

But in fact, they are real life people body-painted on their skin!!

Here are some more images taken from a distance. 

Her incredible use of acrylic paint on 3 dimensional objects made them absolutely flat and became part of her painting!!
Most of painters try to make realistic painting by put more and more details in their paintings. But she did completely opposite from it. She took out all the details from objects and put texture of painting instead, and made life objects into painting! That's absolutely fantastic!
Her idea that making something real not real gave me a new perspective on my FMP!

Contextual Studies: Review on "A woman is a woman"

   I haven’t seen many French films but ‘A Woman is a Woman(UNE FEMME EST UNE FEMME )’ directed by Jean-Luc Godard became one of my rememberable films. At the end, I thought it was a bit strange but such a charming film because of its content, about a woman, the attractive performance of Anna Karina, use of colour, and its musical-like effects. It reminds me of a French film, Amelie directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet. Both films have similar features such as importance of the main actress, use of vivid colour in fashion and interior, use of sound effect, and comfortable tempo of conversation. I think that is because the director of Amelie had rather influenced by A Woman is a Woman. The scenes from both films that the character suddenly speaks to us, the people watching the film in front of screen, overlap with each other.

   However how charming the film is, it is not just that. What was so unusual from others was that there are lots of ‘twos’, conflicting pairs in this film. In a book ‘Speaking about Godard’, a philosopher and film analyst Gilles Deleuze points out Godard as, ”What counts with him is not two or three, or however many you like, it’s AND, the conjunction AND… The And is neither the one or the other, it is always between the two, it is the boundary… Godard’s aim is to ‘see the boundaries’ …to make the imperceptible visible.” Here are a few pairs that organize this film: male and female, yes and no, sound and image, musical and film, stillness and movement, comedy and tragedy. Beside the story of the film, most of the pairs are results of using many techniques in one time. Voice narration was used to describe character’s thought in Amelie within rhythmic dialogue, the fine tempo of talk is also one of the attraction but it was text narration that described thought in A Woman is a Woman. The scene that text appeared letter by letter toward Emile and then went back to Angela told that they love each other, it was almost like a well-designed graphic piece. Text was used when they didn’t want to talk and decided to talk by titles of books and also at the very end of the film, an electric message said ‘end’ when Angela closed curtain like an end of Broadway musical. It is not really a musical film(they didn’t sing during conversations) but it used musical-like music and sound effects directed by Michel Legrand that expressed characters’ feeling and atmosphere of the moment very well. With sounds, a variety of camerawork is used such as sometimes it is continuous cut from wide angle and sometimes it is a fragment of close image.

   This film attracts and interests me visually with its remarkable sense of using colours and text and also by its challenge to explore harmony of opposite elements together using different film techniques. It pushes me to challenge myself to try these found skills in my execution to find a new harmony.

Liu Bolin, the chameleon man

He is a Chinese artist known as an 'invisible man'.

Here's one of his work that represents himself really well.

Could you find him?

It is not just a photo of a building.

If you look really carefully, you can find him almost disappeared in the surrounding.

He has an incredible talent to camouflage himself by painting his body!

His works are awesome!
My final major project is about 'deception'.
I think his camouflage work could be a kind of deception.
I wish I had such a talent to paint, so I can try this illusion for my FMP...


I'm not sure if these are his works as well but I put them here too.

I found these images while I was researching on my FMP.
These images were used for a campaign of UNICEF China, that China has over 1.5 million underprivileged children.
The message written in Chinese says "Don't ignore me".
The style of the work and the message really work well together.
The idea of merged into background helps me carrying on FMP.