Fashion And Family

There are four parts to my ad done by Versace, all of which are done in black and white. The first panel has two girls who are opposite, as in, one is blonde one has dyed jet black hair with outfits that complement each other but are still quite different. The outfits are more chic and edgy, both are black, and both girls have their hair slightly messy and down. The blonde haired girl has on a simplified version of a motorcycle jacket with these tight leather pants that have a piece of what seems to be spandex right above the knee are which is then joined at the knee by more leather but with a bit of a layered design.
The other girl is wearing a shiny and short dress, with a halter style strapping. Both of them are staring right out of the page at you with intense eyes, amplified with black overdone eye shadow. The next three images have the same blonde haired girl, but the second girl is different from the first ad and used in the last three. At first this new girl looks to almost be the twin of the blonde girl but now that I’ve looked for a 7^th time, I don’t think she is. She looks a lot like the blonde girl but has dirty blonde or very light brown hair with blonde highlights. The second ad has the girls in almost identical dresses that are still a bit edgy but much more reserved. The dresses are short, one black and one white, and paired with almost knee high black leather boots. I could see the dresses being worn by a guest to a wedding or possibly a cocktail party. In the third image, I believe the girls are wearing the same dress except they’ve switched sides (the blonde is on the right now), and the dirty blonde has her arm wrapped around the other girls shoulders and the new addition to the image is the shiny clutch she’s holding. I’ve been mistaken. The second, third, and fourth image have the same dirty blonde girl, and now this fourth image has a second all blonde girl being used. The fourth ad has now two long dresses that seem they could have been very risqué ball attire, but the shoes that they’re paired with killed that hope. Both girls are wearing very high and shiny heels that look almost like gold Egyptian bangles. The blonde is in black and the dirty blond is in white, both dresses have thigh high slits, the white dress has some cut outs on one side with the edges lined with square silver and a long sleeve on the other side, and the black dress is sleeveless with a halter style top and a cut out near in the chest also line with silver squares.

When I look at the images it kind of reminds me of my family, which is what I briefly wrote about in class. The first and last images looks as if the two girls don’t really like each other much and wanted to create as much distance as possible, but still kind of worked together to get the shot off. A ton of my family is like that. They don’t really like each other much but they act all fake in each others’ faces. They put on a show, and then when they walk away from each other, they talk about each other. Then I look at the two middle images with the girl that could easily pass as sisters, and if not they just seem like they are good friends. That is like my family with their brothers and sisters who look just like them. They get along quite well, but they have a tendency to not like those who don’t quite look like them, even if the other people are married into their family. All of this assimilation and pushing away, instead of just letting opposites attract.

frame of mind

Everyone is entitled to their own opinion so they can be as similar or different from everyone as they'd like. However, you're view on things is shaped by everything and everyone around you. The dominant factor in difference is the culture you grow up in and the culture you are currently in. They form in your mind what is socially acceptable and unacceptable. They show you how things should be perceived. So what happens when you travel to other areas of the world, or see/hear/feel/ experience something new? Do you change it to fit into a part of your culture, or do you begin to think about how you are and break down a piece of your frame to let this new thing become a part of your frame?

Everyone has their opinions of good and bad, happy and sad, acceptable and just plain weird. Well most of the times the cool and happy things to me, and really weird to most others. Oh well!!!

This is [[link->]] Mark Ryden’s ‘Goodbye Bear’ and I absolutely adore this image. It means sooo much to me. First off I fell in love with Ryden’s work 2 summers ago when I saw his painting ‘The Butcher Bunny’ in my art book. He has a different look on subject matter and likes to exaggerate heads. This is so deep to me though, because I have been absolutely in love with teddy bears since birth. When I look at this painting I just want to run up and hug the life out of that teddy. Then I see the sorrow in his eyes as he has to part with who seems to be his best friend. Then the little girl looks like she knows it’s time for her to move on with what could be the day, but is probably her life. Truthfully I don’t care for the girl much, I see this picture and want to grab the bear’s hand and let him know I can be his best friend. He reminds me a lot of one of my favorite teddy bears which is probably why I like this bear so much. I like this picture so much it’s the background on my Ipod, so I see it every day. I have many friends who have called me odd for having it there. They simply do not see what I see. I’ve had friends say oh this is childish, or weird that I like this giant of a teddy bear. However, deep down on this inside, I know what they don’t know. Most of Ryden’s work gets either oddly eerie, or you will be straight up confused and grossed out. He likes blood, and it’s sprayed all over his work. So with my knowledge of his creepiness, I’m convinced that either the little girl or the bear will be severely cut, beheaded, or just spewing out blood. Okay, that creeps me out a bit too, but I’m still trying to understand everything Ryden is saying, so I keep studying the painting.

Many people will see something and truly only glimpse what they’ve seen. They won’t take the time to give at least a thought about what they’ve just seen. Like I’ve said before, many people see or hear, but do not experience what is presented to them. Information goes in one ear and out the other with maybe a fragment making a connection in their mind. It happens in every society but from living it and from hearing from others who are not a part of it, American society is very fast paced, and sometimes we don’t take the time to just breathe and absorb what beauty we have around us. Therefore we do not really see what many others are trying to say. When someone takes the time to really listen, see, experience what is going on, then they’ll have the opportunity to break down a piece of their mental structure so they are then able to break down someone else’s structure and connect them. It may not be a whole wall broken down, maybe just a tiny piece of a corner, but even with that we have shared information and each party has learned something new. Something that may have broke down a piece of their culture, but something that they can make their own and become their culture.

Paintings... after paintings [[ReViSiTeD]]

So there was a bit of a misinterpretation of Berger and his ideas about images being reprinted due to new technology. Berger was saying mostly that we take an image/painting out of context when we do things like, taking a painting and then zoom in on a particular person. If we wanted to study that particular person more closely like that, zooming in, then sure we could probably get more detail of expression and feeling, but then that part of the image is taken out of context. Like the image of Mars and Venus we have in our book, when Venus is zoomed in on, we can see she looks like she’s lost in thought. Not too sure what about, but we know she’s thinking about something. It’s something that is definitely pressing on her conscience. Then, when you put her back in the whole picture, it’s a completely different story! You’ve got these little demon babies all over the place and Mars is looking like a lost mostly naked fool. Venus is most definitely thinking, but it doesn’t seem to be about some random issue that just so happened to come up. Not at all, because she really looks like what hell (no pun intended) am I doing here?!

Now I don’t think my previous interpretation was completely off. I think that even when an entire painting/image is taken out of its original place it is then slightly misrepresented. I understand that Berger is not saying that if we see pictures of things in books, or only see partial images of something, that it’s completely wrong, because not everyone in the world is going to have a chance to go somewhere to look at that one thing. So with the invention of the camera, we are able to capture what is SEEN and at home we’re able to relate to what is going on.

HOWEVER, you are seeing what is presented to you, but you cannot capture the true feelings of when you see such a thing full blown, and in its rightful place. The experience of art is much more than just seeing it and trying to figure out what exactly the artist wants you to know about that person, people, place, event at that point in time. So earlier when I had posted the picture of the Sistine Chapel, yes you can see all of what Michelangelo painted so high up, but when you are actually there, it’s a completely different vibe directly from the art. The ceilings are quite high, yet you can still see almost all of the detail shown in books. So with how well he painted it, you forget about the hundreds of people around you also observing the place, and you get absorbed into what Michelangelo was trying to show you.

So I think what’s really being said by Berger is that yes, reproducing image is fine, because it is giving a chance for an idea to be passed on more readily, and easily to the masses. We just need to remember the context of what is seen in the image, the time period, and the location of where that image would have been seen.

Maybe if we capture something, there should be multiple shots of it. There should be the up-close so we can fully see the image, and possibly a picture of the image in its element (the painting/image with the things around it).

Paintings... after paintings

It’s true. In this day and age, it’s hard to view an original painting without of course traveling to a museum, gallery, or historic place.

However an image… more specifically a replicated image or even a photograph of a painting can only capture so much. We get color, perspective, and depending on how good of an image we can see texture. But that really doesn’t do us any good. Looking at the Mona Lisa on TV, believe me it has been hyped up to be this rather large painting, with huge meaning behind it for that time period. When you read about it in history books and art book, they too go on and on about how big of an impact this made on society. Even when I saw it in person, it was the real thing but far from the actual setting. It’s behind bullet proof glass, and roped off. A million people are trying to go up to it and take a picture of it. It’s also rather small. The biggest upsetting thing about the Mona Lisa for me was that this little 1x1ft painting was adjacent to this 12ft by about 6ft painting of Christ freshly taken off the cross with the thorn crown still on his head, bleeding out for the world to feel his anguish. I REALLY COULDN’T MISS THAT IF I WANTED TO!!! It was just nuts how intense that painting was. And there we go, back to the little box holding a picture of Mona with her little smirk. I’m sure given the time it wasn’t nice to paint such things, but dammit don’t act like the smirk was created that same day. I don’t care if it's 1500 BC, humans smirk!!!

The biggest thing for me though is seeing the Sistine Chapel in person. For years I had seen blown up images, up close images, and even pictures of the entire ceiling, but seeing it in person is a COMPLETELY different experience. The blow up images are small, in your book, and showing you so much detail, when in actuality, it’s a CEILING, and this painting is gigantic and you can still see virtually the same amount of detail. Literally as I walked through the chapel with my neck cracked all the way back and my jaw dropped to the floor, it gives you a whole new feeling of everything going on. How the hell did this man paint this stuff?! More power to him! Looking at the picture in a book, tells a simple childish story. Being there to experience it, tells a story about what is being depicted, but then you begin to think, wow Michelangelo somehow reached the ceiling and painted this entire thing! I didn’t even know ladders were made that tall, especially back then. You also think about what could have been going on in his mind. I’m convinced he was possessed, because nothing normal would make me want to paint something so vivid at an angle that had to be uncomfortable. Seriously I’ve been trying to figure out how he got up there, and how this dude was sitting/laying/breaking his neck.

Lastly, when thinking about reproduced images and paintings, I think about my two favorite artists; Mark Ryden and Adam Isaac Jackson are amazingly different. Both are painters, but with reproduction, photography, and graphic editing, it’s become hard to tell if that’s how the painting truly is, or if it was photographed and edited in Photoshop… Nonetheless I love their work and plan on investing in original pieces as soon as I can find them and have the funds. [[click on their names in this preceding paragraph, mark and adam, to go to their websites]]

these two are by Ryden

these two are by I.A. Jackson