Student Research Papers #2/2

Alicen Simpson

Professor Pepper

SA 321 Intermediate Painting

28 April, 2020

Research Paper #2: Cecily Brown

Biography

Cecily Brown is a British artist who was born in London in 1969. Her mother was a novelist, and her father was an art critic. While neither of her parents were artists themselves, she was exposed to art frequently by her father and she did have extended family who practiced art and who inspired her to do so on her own. Throughout her younger years and as a student she was very interested in art, and she eventually attended multiple art schools including the Epsom School of Art and the Slade School of Fine Art, where she received her BFA degree. She also participated in an exchange program where she studied in New York City. Only one year later, she moved to New York to pursue her career in Painting. However, early in her career she didn’t limit herself to just painting, she has created some notable drawings and she even dabbled in animation. She was greatly influenced by analytic cubism and abstract expressionism, and she ventured into the world of painting where she has stayed for the majority of her career. She works primarily with oil paints and is best known for her abstract pieces with slight representational aspects revolving around intimate and erotic themes. Her work explores sensual concepts from a feminine point of view among the western world and has garnered attention from people worldwide. Brown’s work has been featured in numerous solo exhibitions as well as collaborative shows across the globe including the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, the Museum of Modern Art in New York City as well as The Hague in the Netherlands.

First Deconstruction

In the painting (Figure 1) “Lunge” (2003) by Cecily Brown, the artist has demonstrated great examples of texture, color, rhythm, and balance. When I first viewed this piece, I was intrigued by the connection I immediately felt to nature. I am unsure if this was her intention when creating the painting, but it brought my mind directly to the idea of a dense, lush forest in the summertime. In the painting, she uses a plethora of different textures. It is easy to recognize that she used many different brushes and techniques of paint application across the canvas. It is also evident that she created the painting with layers upon layers of different colors and textures. Some textures remind me of foliage of bushes or trees, and others that are more dirty and messy like mud that was run through by an animal. I can also see some drips that resemble water falling like in a small waterfall or a stream. These textures, in combination with the colors she used really create the nature-like feeling of this piece. She has used lots of greens and browns, but she keeps the viewer’s eye intrigued by adding splashes of warm colors like orange and pink. While nature may be mostly shades of green, brown and blue, other elements like animals and flowers introduce different colors to the environment too. Brown was also able to create a sense of rhythm and movement throughout this painting. Her brushstrokes seem rapid and lively, activating this piece all across the canvas and helping to develop a sense of chaos or intensity. The forms that my eye recognizes as animals, like a fox or a bird are messy enough to give the viewer the idea that they must be moving or that they may be partially hidden by tree branches moving in front of them. There is nothing about this piece that feels as if it is standing still or like a single moment caught in time. In addition to rhythm, this piece has a great sense of balance. The small details and flecks of color are scattered evenly across the piece, leaving no area feeling emptier than the rest. Her splashes of color are balanced on either side of the canvas too. The brushstrokes and various textures Brown created reach all four sides of the canvas pretty evenly and this brings the viewer's eye all around the painting so that no part is left unseen.

Second Deconstruction

The painting (Figure 2) “Untitled (Blood Thicker Than Mud)” (2012) by Cecily Brown is a very intriguing piece. Combining abstraction with representational forms, Brown was able to convey a mix of emotions and messages throughout one single piece. The title of this painting also interests me, as I feel it enhances the message behind the work even further. By leaving it initially called “Untitled” she leaves the interpretation open to whatever the viewer wants to imagine. However, by adding “(Blood Thicker Than Mud)” she hints to a well-known phrase that may direct the audience's thoughts toward a specific message. This piece displays multiple elements and principles of design including balance, harmony, form, and space. Like Brown’s painting titled “lunge”, this painting is very balanced across the canvas. The different colors and shades she used are reflected across each side and the lines and textures aren’t much busier or calmer in one area than another. This helps to draw the viewer’s eye across all areas of the canvas without pulling them more so to one area or another. Another principle of design this piece demonstrates is harmony. How Brown arranged and intertwined all of the human-like figures in this painting truly helps them to feel coherent with each other. This being even though she used a wide array of different skin tones and hair colors. I feel that this combination of variety and harmony is the most powerful aspect of this painting, especially when considering the title of the piece. Brown also demonstrates form and space throughout this painting. Even though the style is very abstract, the arrangement of colors helps to create many different shapes and forms that allude to the idea of there being a large group of women. The organic and flowy lines that curve and intertwine with each other create more of a feminine feeling to this scene, even though there aren’t any truly defining features that would tell us whether the figures are men or women. It is interesting how even though this piece is so abstract, that simply the forms inside of it are enough to give the viewer the idea of there being people. In addition to form, space - or lack thereof - is a very prominent element in this painting. There is very little empty space on this canvas, as the figures we see appear to be very crammed into the space. This creates a feeling of intensity, however, that activates the piece alongside the rapid movement in the brush strokes. The closeness of the elements leads the audience to feel that the figures are comfortable with each other and that there is a strong connection between them.

Figure 1

Cecily brown, “Lunge”, 2003, oil on linen, 48 x 48 inches, http://cecilybrown.com

Figure 2

Cecily Brown, “Untitled (Blood Thicker Than Mud)”, 2012, oil on linen, 109 x 171 inches, http://cecilybrown.com

Works Cited

“Artist.” Cecily Brown, cecilybrown.com/.

“Cecily Brown.” Cecily Brown Biography – Cecily Brown on Artnet, www.artnet.com/artists/cecily-brown/biography.

“Unidentified Drawings, Undated.” Guggenheim, 12 Dec. 2016, www.guggenheim.org/artwork/artist/cecily-brown.
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Sarah Kavanagh

Prof. Jen Pepper

SA-321 Intermediate Painting

5 May 2020

Damien Hirst: Biography and Deconstruction of Works

Damien Hurst, born on June 7^th, 1965 in Bristol, England, is an English artist and art collector whose work showed the beauty of death in his sculptures of dead animals preserved in formaldehyde as well as his “spot paintings” which consisted of bright colorful dots on a blank canvas. He attended the Leeds Arts University in West Yorkshire and Goldsmiths (University of London), and while in college he worked at a mortuary which inspired him to make art about the dead. Never one to shy away from controversy or rebellion, Hirst had a complicated relationship with his mother (he never knew his father) in which he would rebel against her traditional upbringing and she would punish him in creative ways, such as melting his Sex Pistols vinyl over the stove or cutting up his “bondage trousers”; Hirst was also arrested twice in his youth for shoplifting.

Some of Hirst’s biggest inspirations for his contemporary style include collage artist Francis Davsion and conceptual artist Michael Craig Martin, and after he graduated college his work was included in a few smaller galleries and student exhibitions. He and some friends curated a few underground shows in the early 1990s, and one of his first animal installations included a dead cow’s head being consumed by maggots encased in glass. After that, Hirst’s career began to rise especially after the showcasing of one of his most famous works, The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living, which consisted of a shark in formaldehyde in a vitrine. One of his animal installations of a sheep was actually vandalized by another artist who poured black ink onto the piece while it was showing at a gallery and renamed it. Hirst pressed charges and the artist was sentenced to two-years probation and the artwork was restored.

Damien Hirst is not known without his personal issues as well as his unique work. His drinking and smoking left a strain on his marriage, and he made some very offensive comments on the one-year anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, calling it “an artwork in its own right...on one level they need congratulating, which a lot of people shy away from, which is a very dangerous thing”. He has also been a part in a number of legal settlements in regards to plagiarism where his work looks eerily similar to another’s, one of the most famous examples being John Lekay’s crystal skull Spiritus Callidus from 1993 (Hirst made an almost identical crystal skull sculpture in 2007 titled For the Love of God).

Figure One: The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living

The elements that are most prominent in this piece are form, space, texture and line. The most prominent principle shown is form due to the two main contrasting forms that make up the work. The viewer gets an even balance of the natural with the synthetic as we see the beautiful silhouette of the shark with its gaping mouth and powerful pose as its encased in this rigid, clean and almost too-perfect white box. No matter what angle you look at it, there will always be the organic form of the shark outlined by perfect, white lines and crystal-clear glass.

Space is another major element used in this piece due to its massive scale which is used to grab the viewer’s attention even from far away and show the sheer majesty of the shark, even as it’s rotting from death. This piece, being that it is over 200” tall, demands to be seen even from the other side of the room and can be viewed from all sides, even the top. However, no matter what side you are looking through you always have to look up to see the shark, emphasizing its beauty and majesty even in death and decay.

Texture is an important player in this piece because Hirst used a real shark, and even with all the chemicals and preservatives in the world at some point the shark is going to show at least some signs of organic decay. Once the viewer gets up close and personal with the shark, they can see the sagging lines, discoloration and other signs of decaying flesh. The viewer can almost perceive themselves as death when they look at the piece because far away the shark looks mighty and all-powerful, but as you approach it you start to see the signs of aging and eventual decomposing when you are right up close to it, and this effect is successful because of the texture. The organic texture of the shark is also a nice contrast to the smooth, clean texture of the box it resides in, as well.

Line is an important element in this piece because of the way Hirst “breaks up” the shark into three pieces: head, torso and tail. The shark is obviously all-together but the white lines where the boxes meet visually split it up into three equal sections. This gives the piece an almost bio-medical feel to it because he splits the shark up into the three basic parts of its body and the use of clean white lines makes it feel very sterile. One can almost imagine seeing a set of instructions alongside the work on how to dissect it or how to label its body parts because of how Hirst perfectly splits it up.

Figure Two: Row

The most prominent elements in this piece are color, line, space and shape. Color is used because Hirst used almost every color he could possibly think of, from off-white down to deep black and every color of the rainbow with their tints and shades. No one color is favored over the other, and there seems to be an even balance between warm and cool colors. Because the dots are not just pure hues of each color, this keeps the piece from looking tacky or too “rainbowy” and creates a good sense of unity and movement; the viewer’s eyes don’t stay on one particular dot for too long. Also the fact that these bright colors are spaced out on a white wall gives the eye some breathing room; if these were compacted squares instead of spaced out dots this piece would feel a lot more claustrophobic but the dots keep it light and airy.

Line is used in this piece by having these dots arranged on an almost grid pattern giving the illusion of a large rectangle, and it gives the piece a sense of organization that the colors do not have. There is a contrast between the large variety of colors versus the rigid structure that the dots are placed on, and while there are no real “lines” in this piece you can’t help but look at the dots either in a horizontal/vertical/diagonal way. There is a strong sense of organization versus chaos and without the lines this piece would be pure chaos and it would probably be pretty exhausting to look at.

Shape is another important element in this piece because Hirst chose to have all of the circles the same size except for the bottom row which consists of half-circles. This could be interpreted as the pattern in this design would just keep on going if Hirst had infinite amount of wall-space to paint on, but since he doesn’t he just wanted to give the illusion of continuation. Also, because of the fact that these circles are hand-painted and seemingly without the use of a stencil, there’s an illusion that this pattern concaves in certain spots even though it probably doesn’t. The fact that these shapes aren’t perfect makes it more interesting to look at than if they were all precisely the same size and shape.

Space is an important element because Hirst decided to paint directly on the wall instead of a canvas or board, almost as if he was claiming that section of the wall to himself and his artwork. Even if the wall was painted over with another color or design there is still the fact that Hirst got to it first and it will always be on that wall unless somebody decides to chip it off (which would take a long time because of how large the piece is). The use of space, that it’s painted directly on the wall and the fact that it is very large, is Hirst’s way of asserting himself into the contemporary art scene by making that section of the gallery space completely and permanently his.

Damien Hirst, The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living, 1991, tiger shark preserved in formaldehyde in vitrine, 84” x 204” x 84”, https://edu.glogster.com/glog/physical-impossibility-of-death-in-the-mind-of-someone-living/2d6sxv4aqw2?=glogpedia-source

Damien Hirst, Row, 1988, household gloss on wall, 83.3” x 130.5”, http://www.damienhirst.com/row

Works Cited

“Damien Hirst.” Gagosian, 12 Apr. 2018, gagosian.com/artists/damien-hirst/.

Science Ltd. “Damien Hirst.” Read More - Damien Hirst, damienhirst.com/biography/damien-hirst.

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Inka Essenhigh

By Jess Kane

Inka Essenhigh is an extraordinary painter who was born in Bellefonte, Pennsylvania and is currently based in New York City. She is known in the Pop Surrealism, New Figuration, and Comic Abstraction art movements. Artists that are related to her are Jon Currin, Will Cotton, and Lisa Yuskavage who are known as a group of contemporary figurative painters based in New York. She has had work displayed in the Modern Museum of Art, Royal Academy of art, and the second Berlin Biennale. She has also had multiple single exhibitions such as a show at the Virginia MOCA, Centr de Arte de Salamanca in Spain, and The Fruitmarket Gallery in Edinburgh Scotland.

In 2001 Essenhigh started to paint using oils which has “resulted in a sculptural, almost three-dimensional style” (artsy) Though most of her works before were done in with enamel she has been able to develop her own style in both mediums and through that tell stories with her artwork. The main feature in all of her pieces has been mythology that takes the center stage in her illustrations, an example of this would be in her 2006 painting, Spring.

Blue Wave is an oil painting that Inka Essenhigh completed in 2002 depicting multiple different waves about to crash down onto this small unknown object in the corner of the image. This painting shows an understanding of multiple different elements and principles of Design. The first of these principals being her use of color. Though Blue Wave appears to be monochromatic when one first looks at it, it holds multiple different types of blue as well as a small sliver of orange in the piece. Not only is Essenhigh able to trick the eye into thinking that this piece is monochromatic she has also made the blues closer to the viewer’s field of vision a warmer tone than those that appear to be farther away. She plays with these warm and cool tones throughout the piece which mainly shows up on the white caps of the waves. Another use of Design Essenhigh uses in this piece is patterns. Each wave follows a pattern in this piece which adds to her illusion to the perspective as she puts more details in the waves towards the front of the illustration than the ones in the back, but this does not make it any less of a repeated pattern. Each wave has a white cap and each wave is in a row on the canvas that is slowly moving towards the viewer. Movement elaborates more on the pattern that she is conveying with the waves as well as helps the viewer’s eyes flow through the piece. The audience starts in one corner and follows the waves all the way down to the object that is about to be crashed own upon by one of them. The final use of Design must be emphasis. Essenhigh has placed an emphasis on the object in the corner of the painting by making part of it a color that is not blue. She continues to place this emphasis on the large looming wave that is about to crash down upon the object in one quick swoop. Through all these elements and principles, she has created a beautiful painting and drawn the viewer’s attention to the piece as well. She shows a great understanding of all these elements and principles and while the style is simplified the message the painting sends is not. Though Blue Wave, is not the only piece of hers that uses these elements and principles of design as she has incorporated it in all her artwork that she has created throughout her life as an artist.

Fog Spruce with Orange Fungus is a painting Essenhigh created in 2017 that goes back to her roots as an enamel artist as she was able to create a foggy morning image of a forest that is so vibrant and full of color. The longer the viewer stares at this piece the more trees start to come forth from the fog which is a great example of atmospheric perspective that Essenhigh had utilized throughout the painting. Like mentioned before Essenhigh uses color expertly in the painting as most viewers probably do not imagine such vibrant colors when the rest of the forest is so foggy you have to focus in order to see it all, yet she was able to pull out the vibrant greens and oranges in this piece as the grey bark twists and turns with the trees. The use of pattern is also utilized in this painting as each tree has its own unique pattern that is held into the bark which gives the trees their personality and life and while the trees that are nearly covered by the fog may lose this pattern their branches make up for it as they tear through the greyness. While the use of movement is a bit harder to pick out in this piece than in Blue Wave the viewer’s eyes are still guided effortlessly across the painting as the fog reveals more trees in the background from where the viewer started in the foreground. Instead of having you start on one side and move towards another Essinhigh is having you move from the foreground to the background through her use of atmospheric perspective and understanding of how fog works in nature. The viewer is drawn to the bright orange fungi and from there the eyes move back to follow the path that the fungus is cutting into. She has put an emphasis on those fungi by making them such a bright color to contrast the earthy tones of the rest of the painting and it works well with it. Essinhigh has grown greatly between Blue Wave and Fog Spruce with Orange Fungus and will probably continue to grow in her respective mediums as she understands each principle and element of design deeply and utilizes them in her pieces well.

Blue Wave 2002 Oil on Cavas 70 x 74 inches

Fog Spruce with Orange Fungus, 2017, Enamel on Panel 48 x 48 inches

Work Cited

Essenhigh, Inka. “Blue Wave.” Inkaessenhigh.art, 2002,

images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/594166fbe58c62981f4b6f77/1547671333219-

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Essenhigh, Inka. “Fog Spruce with Orange Fungus.” Inkaessenhigh.art, 2017,

images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/594166fbe58c62981f4b6f77/1546447694065-

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“Inka Essenhigh.” 50 Artworks, Bio & Shows on Artsy, www.artsy.net/artist/inka-essenhigh.

Miro, Victoria. “Bio.” Inka Essenhigh, www.inkaessenhigh.art/bio.

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Airelle Jacquette

Pepper

SA-121

April 8th, 2020

A Look Through Jean-Michel Basquiat

When you hear the name Jean-Michel Basquiat what comes to mind? Maybe the term street art? , Jean-Michel Basquiat was known for much more than his street art. He was also known as an artist whos rise coincided with the emergence of a new art movement, Neo-Expressionism, ushering in a wave of new, young and experimental artists that included Julian Schnabel and Susan Rothenberg ("Jean-Michel Basquiat" 2019). Although his art career was brief, Jean-Michel Basquiat has been credited with bringing the African-American and Latino experience into the elite art world ("Jean-Michel Basquiat" 2019).

Jean-Michel Basquiat was known for his primitive style and his collaboration with pop artist Andy Warhol. He was born in Brooklyn, NY on December 22nd, 1960. His mother was of Puerto Rican heritage, and his father a Haitian immigrant which later would inspire some of his work and led him to speak fluently in French, Spanish, and English ("Basquiat Biography, Life & Quotes"). Basquiat showed talent and interest in art at a young age when his father would bring back paper from his job as an accountant and Basquiat would draw on them. As his creative side grew and developed, his mother encouraged him to pursue his artistic talent and attended New York City art museums and exhibitions with Basquiat, by the age of six he was already enrolled as a Junior Member of the Brooklyn Museum ("Basquiat Biography, Life & Quotes"). When his parents divorced his mother was determined unfit to be able to care for him due to a mental instability so, Basquiat lived alone with his father for a while before he claimed that he was receiving physical and emotional abuse, causing him to run away from home ("Basquiat Biography, Life & Quotes").

In the 1970s is when Basquiat first got attention for his graffiti in New York City, around that time he was creating his work under the name “SAMO” ("Jean-Michel Basquiat '' 2019). In 1972 Basquiat started spray-painting in Manhattan with his artist friend, AL Diaz, under the nom de plume, SAMO, an acronym for "Same Old Shit" ("Basquiat Biography, Life & Quotes''). SAMO SAMO soon received media attention from the counterculture press, the Village Voice the most notable among them, due to the nom de plume’s anti-establishment, anti-religion, anti-politics credo packaged in an ultra-contemporary format ("Basquiat Biography, Life & Quotes''). Later, Diaz and Basquiat had a falling out and Basquiat went ahead and ended the project with a message “SAMO IS DEAD '', the message was seen in many galleries and downtown buildings. After taking notes of the message Keith Haring staged a mock wake for SAMO at his Club 57 ("Basquiat Biography, Life & Quotes"). In September 1977 Basquiat quit school at Edward R. Murrow High School, in Brooklyn a year before he was supposed to graduate. He became homeless and in order to make ends meet and to support himself, he started by panhandling, dealing drugs, and peddling hand-painted postcards and T-shirts ("Basquiat Biography, Life & Quotes'').

In the mid-1980s, Basquiat collaborated with famed pop artist Andy Warhol, which resulted in a show of their work from 1984 to 1986. The works included work such as Ten Punching Bags (Last Supper) (1985-86). Warhol would often paint first, then Basquiat would layer over his work ("Basquiat Biography, Life & Quotes"). A few years later in the 1980s, Basquiat went on to exhibit around the world including Africa where he traveled to for a show in Abidjan, Ivory Coast and became the youngest artist ever to be included in Documenta, the international contemporary art extravaganza held every five years in Kassel, Germany ("Basquiat Biography, Life & Quotes"). Around this time Basquiat had around 200 works of art and developed a signature motif of a heroic, crowned black oracle figure. The crown motif was his way of celebrating black people a majestic royalty or deeming them as saints ("Jean-Michel Basquiat" 2019). As Basquiat gained fame his personal problems with drugs also gained attention. He started to become paranoid and isolated himself from everything around him for long stretches of time ("Jean-Michel Basquiat" 2019). In 1988 on August 12th, Basquiat died of a drug overdose in New York City at the age of 27. After his death, in May 2017 a Japanese billionaire bought “Untitled,” a 1982 painting of a skull by Basquiat, for $110.5 million at a Sotheby’s auction. The sale set a record for the highest price for a work by an American artist and for an artwork created after 1980. It was also the highest price for a painting by Basquiat and by a black artist ("Jean-Michel Basquiat" 2019).

In Figure 1 below, “Skull”, Basquiat demonstrates the elements of line, shape, and color with the principles of emphasis and contrast. Basquiat uses thick and thin lines to create the form of the head of the figure in the painting and to create movement and texture with lines that move all over throughout the inside of the figure in the painting. The use of line helps create the figure of the head that is painted in the middle of the painting. He also uses shape in creating the head in the middle of the painting. Shape is also being used in creating different forms and chambers seen throughout the head shape. Basquiat uses the principle of emphasis by placing the figure of the head big and right in the middle of the painting. The use of contrast is being used in the form of color, the background of the painting has patches of red, and patches of blue. Where there are patches of red in the background there are darker, cooler colors of black and blue found in the head. Where there are patches of blue in the background of the painting, there are warmer colors of red, and yellow found in the head. With the painting having this composition with colors, it creates contrast, the cooler colors will fade into the background, and the warmer colors will push forward helping the figure of the head push to the foreground.

In Figure 2 below, “Flexible”, Basquiat demonstrates the elements of line and space, with the principles of Contrast and emphasis. Basquiat uses thick and thin lines by creating the figure seen in the middle of the painting and by creating movement by having thick lines in the form of arms move in a circular motion through the middle of the painting. He uses negative and positive space in the painting with the figure being the positive space that fills the negative space around it. Basquiat uses contrast by using positive and negative space, with the figure filling the painting as a positive form and the black background being the negative space, it creates a contrast between the two. Basquiat uses emphasis in the form of the positive and negative space and also by painting the figure at a large scale in the middle of the painting.

Jean-Michel Basquiat’s life may have been short but during his short life time he accomplished a lot from selling his art on postcards in the streets, to traveling world wide as his work was shown in galleries. Even though he passed away in the 1980s, his work can still be seen and sold today. After his death, in May 2017 a Japanese billionaire bought “Untitled,” a 1982 painting of a skull by Basquiat, for $110.5 million at a Sotheby’s auction. The sale set a record for the highest price for a work by an American artist and for an artwork created after 1980. It was also the highest price for a painting by Basquiat and by a black artist ("Jean-Michel Basquiat" 2019).