Carrie Mae Weems

Carrie Mae Weems

Carrie Mae Weems uses text, fabric, audio, digital images and instillation video when creating, but she is known for being a photographer with impeccable story telling skills, with the ability to tell a story through her pictures. Her style of art is influenced by history, specifically black history. She shoots photos of people reenacting major mild stones in our history. Politics, sexism and personal identity are also displayed in her work. She scrutinizes every event just to make sure she is portraying the story right.  As a young child she wanted to know more about herself, her voice. These are things that intrigued her. Carrie Mae Weems has a huge family of 300 plus members that influence her art as well. A lot of her photos are just memories of growing up black. This is something everyone wouldn’t be able to relate to, that’s what makes it so beautiful. Carrie is allowing people to enter her world. Carrie Mae is an artist who wants to keep the past very much present and I think people could appreciate that.

The Wasteland

The documentary The Wasteland was nothing short of amazing. I learned how art and a person’s way of like can go hand and hand. It is a literal statement when someone says a picture is worth a million words. Vic Muniz is a contemporary artist with a unique way of expressing his thoughts through his artwork. He uses objects found in everyday life, one of those items being garbage. Vic’s next project would take place in Brazil where he is originally from, in the largest garbage dump in the world. He sought out to change the lives of a few individuals who worked at the dump.

Vic not only wanted to give the employees at the dump proceeds of the pictures taken of them he wanted to do a social experiment. He wanted to take the pickers out of their element and “show them another world”. Vic had his own reservations about the pickers before he met them, thinking they were all drug users. After meeting and getting to know one another a bond was created. The way Vic viewed the employees changed, he realized they were hard working people who weren’t fortunate. In the film Vic made an excellent point when he said, “the same garbage from the millionaire’s mansion mixes with the poorest”. We are all human we are just living with different circumstances.

            The artwork done was astronomical and it gave the pickers a sense of importance, boosted their self-esteem. They realized the garbage they work with everyday can be transformed into something beautiful. Vic taught them how to look at art and explained how people often interpreted it. See the picture then the material and then understand the idea. This also applies to life and I believe they understood that.

            Vic Muniz did something amazing he gave the pickers hope for a better life. Friendships were built and lives were changed. Art and social change are both influential in this film.

Marc Chagall

I and the Village

Oil on Canvas 1911

Cubism was created by two well known artists, Picasso and Braque. The time was around 1907. Photography was also out around this time. Picasso and Braque brought something new to the art scene and remained relevant. Cubism is geometric shapes that overlap each other forming a picture when analyzed.  The geometric shapes gave the viewer the chance to view the picture behind the picture, the structure instead of just viewing the surface. It is said that this is how we all view things at a glance. The picture has many different shapes all pulling together to form a picture. Cubism goes against what we learned art should look like. The picture is flat, two dimensional and does not follow the traditional Western style of art. The colors used in this style of art are not heavy mostly plain colors.

Peter Blume

The Eternal City

Oil on board 1937

The surrealism movement was when art was based on the unconscious mind. Unconscious like when a person is in a dream like state. When people dream, we often have weird or unrealistic things happening in our dreams. Often those things can symbolize something this is what surrealism is based on. In the picture I choose the green jack in a box represented someone or something scary, mean etc. The jack in the box is exaggerated but gets the point across. The picture almost seems animated, the woman sitting down panhandling doesn’t seem to be threaten by this monster and nor does anyone else in the picture. There are different types of people all in one picture. There are businessmen, soldier’s elderly and animals. The symbolization between all  people in the picture is civilization.