Artist Book Continued

In approaching my artist book project, I found it necessary to modify the current focus of my inspiration. Originally, I was photographing pathways in a very linear fashion. My subjects had a very clear ‘structure’ and were the prototypical idea of a path. Essentially they had a beginning and middle, but not always a clear ending. But with my artist book, I am choosing to represent a circular kind of pathway. In this method, I think I can also make the book itself circular. Waves, seasons, and the human body may be possible focuses for this project. The body has a multitude of circular pathways, the four seasons are entirely circular, and waves reflect the nature of the universe in general. My hope is that I can narrow my focus on a few strong ideas to incorporate into my book.

Schematics

There is an error with my other images jpeg encoding. I will rescan it asap and upload.

Response to "What Time Looks Like at the Moment"

One of the most fascinating aspects of modern art is the range of forms in which the art itself can take. Predominantly, contemporary art seems concerned with ideas over the actual execution of the art object. The artist themselves are very keen on making relationships and connections between ideas. Because of this, it seems that the objective of making art is changing, at least for some people. Whereas, the traditional goal of an artwork (classically) was to make something beautiful and charged, nowadays it seems more about simply being ‘radical’ and throwing really random things into a collage.
However, it is not until one flips through an ‘artist book’ that execution becomes just as important as the ideas contained. I believe that this is due, in part, to the sequential nature of the artist book. Each page is dependent and connected to its previous and successive pages. So in that way it becomes the artist’s job to develop a creative solution that connects each page. In Michael Snow’s Cover-to-Cover, he essentially mirrors the book and draws the sequence of pages towards the center rather than the end of the book. To me, this is extremely clever, and also a cool idea. It is not an artwork that simply describes an idea. Instead, it can inspire creativity in execution and teach artists how to view sequential artwork through a new lens.

...the rest of the photos

Source Exploration

In exploring the idea of a pathway, I have discovered that there are many unique approaches to this subject. Last week, I was approaching ‘paths’ as we typically think of them, walkways, streets, pedestrian crossings, etc. However, the aforesaid is only a very literal interpretation of a path. It does not have to exist as a surface that people are meant to walk on. Instead, a path can be made up of much smaller objects such as wires, tree roots or cracks in the ground. What all these have in common is that they reflect the nature of a path which branches instead of one which remains straight on a course. In addition to this, I also discovered that a path can be represented through modes of transportation. I began to develop this idea in two of my previous photos from last week. However, there are still many other aspects of transportation throughout the city of Boston. To me train tracks would be very interesting to photograph because there is such a great level of detail in line around said tracks. There are escalators, stairs, bridges and elevators, all of which represent a unique motion. Capturing this sense of motion and direction is my primary goal for this idea.

Pissarro - The Father of Impressionism

Camille Pissarro was born on St. Thomas in the Virgin Islands but moved to Paris at age 12. There he studied painting at a number of art institutes around France. Among his mentors was Gustav Courbet and Jean Corot. He created many of his early works in France, then moved to England where he painted in London. During his lifetime, Pissarro mentored such greats as Paul Cezanne and Paul Gauguin. He experimented with pointilism and Neo-impressionism before settling once again on true impressionism. Pissarro sold very few of his paintings in his lifetime, but in the present his works are valued up to several million dollars.

References

Wikipedia.org

Giovanni Antonio Canal - Canaletto

Giovanni Antonio Canal was known as Canaletto to indicate him as 'little canal' as his father was of the same name. He worked from the early 1700's untill his death in 1768. Born in Venice, Canaletto was apprenticed to his father and brother as a theatre set painter. After returning from Rome in 1719, he began painting different landscapes in and around Venice. He slowly gathered attention and reputation, but eventually Englishman stopped traveling to Venice and Canaletto had to relocate to London. There the quality of his work began to decline and the paintings lost their fluidity. Sadly Canaletto never fully regained his reputation during his lifetime.

Three Artists - Source Research

Aerount van der Neer was a dutch landscape artist based in Amsterdam. He never became notably successful during his lifetime, but his paintings are quite valuable nowadays. The subject of which typically includes highly detailed waterways and roads. This artist had a particular skill for noticing transparency in objects at a distance and how to represent that in a subtle and effective way. In some cases he did employ the help of Albert Cuyp as a sort of collaborative painting effort. Despite this skill he did not acquire sufficient wealth via life as an artist and was required to maintain a tavern in order to support his wife and son.