Georgia O'Keeffe
Georgia Totto O'Keeffe was born in Sun Prairie Wisconsin United States on November 15, 1887. She was the second of seven children and first daughter of dairy farmers, Francis Calyxtus O'Keeffe and Ida (Totto) O'Keeffe. By the age of ten she had decided she wanted to be an artist, her and her sister were instructed art by local watercolourist Sara Mann. O'Keeffe attended Town Hall School in Sun Prairie, high school at Sacred Heart Academy in Madison Wisconsin between 1901 and 1902, after he family moved to Peacock Hill in Williamsburg Virginia O'Keeffe stayed with her aunt in Wisconsin and attended Madison High School and then returned to her family in 1903. She finished high school as a boarder at Chatham Episcopal Institute in Virginia (now Chatham Hall), she graduated in 1905 as a member of Kappa Delta. She then moved on to study at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago from 1905 to 1906. In 1907 she studied under William Merritt Chase in New York at the Art Students League. In 1908 her still life Dead Rabbit with Copper Pot won her a scholarship to attend the League's outdoor summer school at Lake George, New York. O'Keeffe decided not to pursue a career as an artist in the fall of 1908, she claimed she could never distinguish herself as an artist within the mimetic tradition. She became employed in Chicago as a commercial artist. For the next four years she did not paint and she said that the smell of turpentine made her sick. In 1912 she was inspired to paint again by a class at the University of Virginia Summer School that introduced her to innovative ideas of Arthur Wesley Dow taught by Alon Bement, she was inspired by the way Dow expressed himself using line, color, and shading harmoniously. From 1912 to 1914 she taught art classes in public schools Amarillo in the Texas Panhandle. From 1914 to 1915 she attended classes from Dow at Teachers College of Columbia University which inspired her and influenced her point of view greatly. During the summer from 1913 to 1916 O'Keeffe assisted Bement in his teaching. In the fall of 1915 she taught at Columbia College, Columbia, South Carolina during which time she completed a series of charcoal abstractions that are considered highly innovative. After more course work in the spring of 1916 and summer teaching for Bement, O'Keeffe became the head of the art department at West Texas State Normal College from fall 1916 to February 1918. Some of her abstract charcoal drawings were displayed by Alfred Stieglitz at his 291 gallery in 1916 he said that the drawings were "purest, finest, sincerest things that had entered 291 in a long while". Alfred Stieglitz organized O'Keeffe's first solo show at 291 in the April of 1917. which included oil paintings and water colours she had done in Texas. Beginning in 1916 Stiegliz and O'Keeffe became in frequent corresponding, in the June of 1918 she accepted his invitation to move to New York where she was to devote all of her time to her work. They were deeply in love and began living together shortly after she arrived. In 1924 the divorce of Stiegliz's previous marriage was finally approved by a judge and within four months he married O'Keeffe, it was a small wedding without a reception or honeymoon, O'Keeffe said that they married to help the troubles of Stiegliz's daughter Kitty who at the time was being treated for depression and hallucinations. In 1917 Stiegliz had an exhibition of his photography of O'Keeffe, he photographed her until 1937 when he retired from photography most of his more erotic photographs of her are from the 1910's to the early 1920's. In total he took more than 350 portraits of her before retiring. When O'Keeffe discussed the photographs with her in the nude she said "I felt somehow that the photographs had nothing to do with me personally." and also "When I look over the photographs Stieglitz took of me some of them more than sixty years ago I wonder who that person is. It is as if in my one life I have lived many lives. If the person in the photographs were living in this world today, she would be quite a different person but it doesn't matter Stieglitz photographed her then." O'Keeffe became sick during the 1918 flu pandemic but she survived, soon after which she began working in mainly oil paint rather than watercolours like she had been using before. By the mis 1920's O'Keeffe had started to paint large-scale nature forms as if being viewed through a magnifier. In 1924 she painted Petunia,No.2, her first large scale flower painting which was exhibited for the first time in 1925. 1970's feminists celebrated O'Keeffe as the originator of "female inconography" after her painting Black Iris painted in 1926 was interpreted as a representation of female genitalia, seeing as it was not the message O'Keeffe had intended to project with the painting she rejected their celebration and refused to cooperate with their projects. When speaking of her painting the green apple painted in 1922 that represents her notion of simple meaningful life she said "It is only by selection, by elimination, and by emphasis that we get at the real meaning of things" In 1923 Stiegliz started to organize annual exhibitions of O'Keeffe's work and by the mid 1920's O'Keeffe had become known as one of the most important American artists and her work commanded high prices. In 1928 there was almost a sale for six of her calla lily paintings for the price of US$25,000 which had the sale not fallen through would have been the most ever paid for a group of paintings by a living American artist, and despite the sale falling through it attracted extensive media attention. From 1929 to 1949 O'Keeffe traveled to New Mexico each year where she found wonderful inspiration for her art such as deserts, mountains, bones, and rocks. In late 1932 O'Keeffe had a nervous breakdown that was partially brought on because of Radio City Music Hall mural project that she was unable to finish after it fell behind schedule, in early 1933 she was hospitalized. After that she didn't paint again until early 1934. In 1940 O'Keeffe moved to Ghost Ranch, she offend used her Ford Model A which she bought and learned to dive in 1929 as an art studio. In the 1930's and 1940's O'Keeffe became more well known and her popularity grew which earned her many commissions, her work was exhibited in New York, the Art Institute of Chicago, Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) in Manhattan, and other exhibits. In the mid 1940's the Whitney Museum of American Art in Manhattan sponsored a project for O'Keeffe to make the first catalogue of her work. Beginning in 1936 O'Keeffe became very interested in the "Black Place" which was in her words a place that resembled "A mile of elephants with gray hills and white sand at their feet." This place was about 150 miles from her house in Ghost Ranch, while painting here she experienced trouble keeping her canvas on the easel and when it became extremely hot she crawled under her car to shade her from the sun's rays. She continued to plaint this place for years. Another place she painted was the "White Place" which was a white formation of rocks near her Abiquiu house. Shortly after her arrival in New Mexico in the summer of 1946 she returned back to New York due to Stieglitz suffering a cerebral thrombosis, he died July 13, 1946. O'Keeffe spent the next three years mostly in New York settling his estate. In 1949 she moved permanently to New Mexico , she did paintings of architecture of her Abiquiu house, and then moved on to do a series inspired by the view of clouds out the window of planes. In the 1940's O'Keeffe met Todd Webb the photographer and after he moved to New Mexico in 1961 he often photographed her as well as other important American photographers, these photographers often portrayed her a a lonesome and self-made person. Webb reveals new aspects of O'Keeffe's character by showing a relaxed friendship through the calm and quiet look he portrays her with rather than showing the "prickly personality" she was known to have. In 1962 O'Keeffe was elected to the fifty-member American Academy of Arts and Letters and in 1966 was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Her public career was greatly brought back to life in 1970 when the Whitney Museum of American Art mounted the "Georgia O'Keeffe Retrospective Exhibition". Two years later in 1972 Macular degeneration compromised her eyesight and caused her to lose her central vision and only have peripheral vision, she stopped oil painting in 1972 although she continued drawing in pencil and charcoal until 1984. In 1973 a young potter came to her house looking for work, O'Keeffe hired him full time and he assisted her with odd jobs and became her closest confidence companion, and business manager. He taught her to work with clay and with assistance she created clay pots and a series of watercolour works. She wrote a book about her art in 1976 and allowed a film to be made about her in 1977. O'Keeffe was awarded with the Presidential Medak of Freedom by President Gerald R. Ford on January 10, 1977 which is the highest honor awarded to American citizens and in 1985 she was awarded the National Medal of Arts. In her 90's O'Keeffe became very frail and moved to Santa Fe in 1984. She dies on March 6, 1986 at the age of 98, her ashes were spread at the top of Pedernal Mountain as to her request over the place she loved so very much, her "faraway". In honor of her many paintings of the badlands at Ghost Ranch in January of 2006 a fossilized species of archosaur was named Effigia okeefeae ("O'Keeffe's Ghost").
I like O'Keeffe's work because of her use of colours that work well together, I find the use of detail of the flowers very interesting and she was a main inspiration of many of my France photographs and some of my drawings as well.
I like her work because of her use of bight colours, her work does not have a look of being too busy with too many aspects or too many different colours. I have a personal interest in flowers and close up angles of them which is also very prominent in my own photography.
She worked in The American modernism movement.
I like O'Keeffe's work because of her use of colours that work well together, I find the use of detail of the flowers very interesting and she was a main inspiration of many of my France photographs and some of my drawings as well.
I like her work because of her use of bight colours, her work does not have a look of being too busy with too many aspects or too many different colours. I have a personal interest in flowers and close up angles of them which is also very prominent in my own photography.
She worked in The American modernism movement.
Gustav Klimt
He was born July 14, 1862, he was Austrian and a main painter of the Vienna Secession movement. Klimt's primary subject was the female body. He died on February 6, 1918. I like his work because of his consistent theme of golds, yellows, and oranges. I like his use of patterns, shapes and textures. I also personally really like the art nouveau movement and it's movement.
He worked in the movements symbolism and art nouveau.
He worked in the movements symbolism and art nouveau.
Johannes Vermeer
There is many unknown facts about Vermeer that can not be found, all that is known comes from some registers, a few official documents and comments by other artists. Thoré Bürger named him "The Sphinx of Delft" Born in 1632 he was baptized on October 31, 1632 in Delft, Dutch Republic (which is now Netherlands). Vermeer got into art because his father started selling paintings and he took up the business when his father died in October 1652. In April 1653 Vermeer married Catharina Bolenes who was of Catholic religion, his mother in law, Maria Thins, was believed to have insisted him convert his religious views to Catholic before the wedding. Many people doubted that he truly changed his beliefs, but his painting that he made between 1670 and 1672 The Allegory of Faith showed much symbolism that suggests him to have believed in the Catholic religion. His mother-in-law Maria Thins was very wealthy and later Vermeer and his wife moved in with her mother. Her home was large with much space in Oude Langendijk. He had 15 children four of which died before they were baptized, known names of them are Maria, Elisabeth, Cornelia, Aleydis, Beatrix, Johannes, Gertruyd, Franciscus, Catharina, and Ignatius which are known from wills of relatives. It is unclear who Vermeer apprenticed for as a painter. On 29 December 1653 Vermeer became a member of the Guild of Saint Luke which was a trade association for painters, in the records it shows thatVermeer did not pay the usual admission fee but it was a year of plague, war and economic crisis. In 1657 the local art collector Pieter van Ruijven lent him some money. Vermeer was elected head of the guild and was reelected in 1663, 1670, and 167. During 1663 figures such as a baker has some of his paintings as collateral. In the year of disaster (1672) the Dutch Republic was invading, economics did not improve and in the summer of 1675 Vermeer needed to borrow money. In December of 1675 he fell into a frenzy and died within a year and a half he died on December 15, 1675 at the age of 43 in Delft, Dutch Republic. He was buried in the Protestant Old Church. His paintings still owned by the family were sold to pay off depts. Vermeer was well respected in his town of Delft but due to Pieter van Ruijven buying most of his work his fame was not well spread to other towns. For two centuries after his death, his works were appreciated by a number of connoisseurs in Holland.
I like his work because of the skill he has to capture a moment in time. I also like that he has good value and proportions to create realistic works. I really enjoyed the novel based on The Girl with a Pearl Earring because it relates his paintings to the story line and gives them more meaning behind them.
He worked in the Dutch Golden Age and Baroque movements
I like his work because of the skill he has to capture a moment in time. I also like that he has good value and proportions to create realistic works. I really enjoyed the novel based on The Girl with a Pearl Earring because it relates his paintings to the story line and gives them more meaning behind them.
He worked in the Dutch Golden Age and Baroque movements
Vincent Van Gogh
He was born on March 30, 1853 and born on July 29, 1890. I like his work because of his sharp unblended brush strokes. I also really like his surreal interpretation of stars and their light.
He worked in the Post-Impressionism movement
He worked in the Post-Impressionism movement
Mark Ryden
In 1963 on January 20 Mark Ryden was born in Medford Oregon, Ryden was raised in Southern California by his parents Barbra and Keith Ryden, he has two sisters and two brothers. In 1987 Graduated from the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena. From 1988 to 1998 Ryden worked as a commercial artist, in which time he created the album covers for Michael Jackson's Dangerous, Jack off Jill's Clear Hearts Gray Flowers, Red Hot Chili Peppers' One Hot Minute, Aerosmith's Love in an Elevator and the book covers of Stephen Kings' Desperation and the Regulators. Ryden made his living this way until Robert Williams took up his work, Williams had been a member of the Zap Comix collective. In 1994 Ryden's work was featured on the cover of Juxtapoz which was a magazine dedicated to the art movement Ryden works in (Pop Surrealist/Lowbrow art). In 1998 Ryden made his debut through his first solo show "The Meat Show" which took place in Pasadena California. Ryden has a fascination with meat, the contradiction between the meat we use as food and the living animal it used to be is something that interests Ryden and is one of the reasons he continues to use meat in his works. Ryden believes that in this reality we are kept here by our bodies like garments of meat. In 2004 the exhibit Wondertoonel which refers to a cabinet of curiosities or Wunderkammer, was organized by the Frye Museum in Seattle and the Pasadena Museum of California Art which broke records for attendance in Pasadena and was the best attended exhibition since The Frye Museum opened in 1951. In 2007 he had the exhibition The Tree Show which opened at the Michael Kohn Gallery in Los Angeles. The message behind this show was the modern human experience of nature, Ryden said "Some people look at these massive trees and feel a sort of spiritual awe looking at them, and then other people just want to cut them up and sell them, they only see a commodity". Ryden created limited edition art works to raise money for the Sierra Club and Nature Nature Conservancy. In 2009 Ryden had the exhibition The Snow Yak Show at the Tomio Koyama Gallery in Tokyo, the theme of the exhibition is more serene and suggestive of solitude, peacefulness and introspection. On October 24th in 2009 he married his longtime partner Marion Peck who is also an artist. In 2010 was to debut of Ryden's exhibition The Gay 90's: Old Tyme Art Show at the Paul Kasmin Gallery in New York. The theme of the show was the idealism and sentimentalism of the 1890s while also addressing the role of kitsch and nostalgia in our present day culture. Ryden's work The Tree of Life was featured in the exhibition The Artist's Museum, Los Angeles Artists 1980-2010. Ryden has two children Rosie and Jasper.
I like the soft glow to his work and how he sends deep messages, often through a lot of symbolism. My favorite exhibition is The Snow Yak Show because of it's more serene theme.
He works in the Pop Surrealist or Lowbrow art movement.
I like the soft glow to his work and how he sends deep messages, often through a lot of symbolism. My favorite exhibition is The Snow Yak Show because of it's more serene theme.
He works in the Pop Surrealist or Lowbrow art movement.
Chris Jordan
The meaning behind Jordan's work is to shed light on statistics of issues in the USA that people unconsciously do without realizing or are not always aware of. He uses common items that represent his message and then creates a larger image out of many of the little items.
I think that his work is very meaningful and important because his art is not shallow . He doesn't create his works for just something nice to look at, each work has a deep meaning and represents an important issue affecting the USA today. It is important because it raises awareness which could help to make a change about the issues at hand.
I think that his work is very meaningful and important because his art is not shallow . He doesn't create his works for just something nice to look at, each work has a deep meaning and represents an important issue affecting the USA today. It is important because it raises awareness which could help to make a change about the issues at hand.
Dog and Cat Collars, 2009 60x67"
This work is made up of 10, 000 cat and dog collars which represents the number of cats and dogs that are euthanized every day in the USA because they are not wanted.
Light Bulbs, 2008 72x96"
This work is made up of 320, 000 light bulbs which represents the number of kilowatt hours of electricity wasted every minute due to inefficient residential electricity usage such as computer on sleep mode and bad wireing.
Building Blocks, 2013 14x20 feet, in 70 2x2-foot panels
This work is made up of 1.2 million children's building blocks which represents all the students that drop out of high school every year in the USA (this could also be measured as 7, 000 students each day).
Unsinkable, 2013 60x107"
This work is made up of 67, 000 mushroom clouds which represents number of metric tons of ultra-radioactive uranium plutonium waste being stored in temporary pools at the 104 nuclear power plants in the USA that require to be cooled by hundred of thousands of gallons of circulating water. The pools are not protected properly in case of disasters such as power loss, human error, and natural disasters. Just one of these pools would cause 138, 000 deaths ( which is more than all the Japanese who died in 1945 from the bombing of Hiroshima) and contaminate 2, 000 square miles of American land. There is currently a risk of the Reactor Unit 4 at Japanès Fukushima-Daiichi plant collapsing due to the many recent earth quakes that have been effecting it. If it were to experience an earthquake of the magnitude of 7 it would release 85 times as much radiation as the Chernobyl disaster. This would destroy the world environment and our civilization, the entire northern hemisphere would be destroyed within weeks or months by traveling the jet stream and it would continue circling the globe.
Fairy Tail Reflection
1) I think the author is saying that young people of today live in unawareness of many things, in our society we are given many opportunities that not everyone is given but we do not appreciate what we have although we are becoming sick with greed and selfishness.
2) I feel that the author believes that in today's time being a youth gives us many opportunities that didn't exist before our time but it is poisoning our minds and we are becoming selfish, ungrateful and obsessed with possessions.
3) By the word oyster the author means opportunities. An oyster can take a single grain of sand and turn it into a beautiful pearl this metaphor is used to represent takeing the smallest chance and it turning out wonderfully.
4) According to the author to make the child face all of the sad truth of out world by explaining that the oyster isn't for all of the children of the world or that such good fortune is making the Earth sick would ruin the story.
2) I feel that the author believes that in today's time being a youth gives us many opportunities that didn't exist before our time but it is poisoning our minds and we are becoming selfish, ungrateful and obsessed with possessions.
3) By the word oyster the author means opportunities. An oyster can take a single grain of sand and turn it into a beautiful pearl this metaphor is used to represent takeing the smallest chance and it turning out wonderfully.
4) According to the author to make the child face all of the sad truth of out world by explaining that the oyster isn't for all of the children of the world or that such good fortune is making the Earth sick would ruin the story.
Chuck Close
During his life Close had to overcome many challenges, such as being dyslexic in a time when it was not understood and simply considered to be dumb and lazy, he was big and clumsy so he couldn't play sports like his friends could, his father was always ill and his family moved homes often, at the age of 11 Close's father died, his mother got breast cancer, his family lost their home due to medical expenses, his grandmother had Parkinson's disease, Close spent most of the year in bed with nephritis (kidney infection). Close was bald by the age of 20 which he hated about his appearance, on December 7, 1988 when Close was 49 he was stricken with a spinal blood clot which left him a quadriplegic. This caused him to need a motorized wheelchair but he didn't let that stop him from making art.
The word "knitting" when pertaining to Close's work refers to what he called the process of him using exacting grids from huge large-frame Polaroid pictures of his models and then recreating the images on canvas in colour.
If I were to try to describe Close's work to a blind person I would say that Close's work has more than one type of style that he creates, one being paintings of people that are the exact same as the way the person looks in real life, every detail is so perfect it appears that the person is standing in front of you and you're looking into their face. Another type of art he creates is another form of portrait of people only this one is not perfectly exact, these are made up of many tiny squares, inside each square is colourful shapes and designs that altogether from a distance the squares of design create a bigger picture that looks like a person. Although it is not perfectly clear, the image of the person is blurry and the image is inferred by the viewer.
The word "knitting" when pertaining to Close's work refers to what he called the process of him using exacting grids from huge large-frame Polaroid pictures of his models and then recreating the images on canvas in colour.
If I were to try to describe Close's work to a blind person I would say that Close's work has more than one type of style that he creates, one being paintings of people that are the exact same as the way the person looks in real life, every detail is so perfect it appears that the person is standing in front of you and you're looking into their face. Another type of art he creates is another form of portrait of people only this one is not perfectly exact, these are made up of many tiny squares, inside each square is colourful shapes and designs that altogether from a distance the squares of design create a bigger picture that looks like a person. Although it is not perfectly clear, the image of the person is blurry and the image is inferred by the viewer.