Lisa Honeywood

Choose two artists whose work addresses identity. Discuss a single work by each artist. Explain the ideas each artist is trying to represent and how they are expressed.

Lisa Honeywood

Word Count: 1,125

This essay will explain two artists’ works which address identity. By referring to context and influences I will be discussing Tracey Emin’s “My Bed” and Barbara Kruger’s “You Are Not Yourself”.

To begin with, I will talk about Tracey Emin’s “My Bed”.  Well- known for her confessional and intimate art, Tracey Emin uses “My Bed” to reveal personal details of her life to captivate the audience with her expression of emotions. To be able to combine her work and her personal life has made it easy for her to have an intimacy with her viewers. She has shown us her own bed, which for most people is an escape from the difficulties of life on the outside. However, Emin opens up and shows even the most embarrassing things; empty vodka bottles, cigarette butts, stained sheet covers, worn underwear and condoms. This represented the time in her life when she was suffering from suicidal depression, and did not get up from her bed for days.  I believe that these ideas that she has created address identity, showing one particular side of her personality, baring her more intimate, yet obscene lifestyle which many people would keep private. I also believe that the bed being in such an open, empty space, could represent her loneliness at the time, and expresses that emotion of sadness in her identity.

 Yuan Chai and Jian Jun Xi, two performance artists, jumped on the bed with bare chests in order to improve the work. They called their performance “Two Naked Men Jump Into Tracey's Bed”. The men also had a pillow fight on the bed to gain applause from the crowd. Their performance was seen as a sexual connotation; both men said they considered "a sexual act was necessary to fully respond to Tracey's piece.”

 Prior to its Tate Gallery showing, the work had appeared elsewhere, including Tokyo, New York and London. Appearing in Tokyo, “My Bed” was shown in a long, rectangular room with windows on one side, a rope noose suspended from the ceiling and a wooden coffin box adjacent to it, beside which were two bound cases. A collection of blue paintings were arranged on the long wall, and the other wall had two blue neon signs. In these exhibitions Emin seems to be expressing the difficult period in her life, the noose and wooden coffin box represent the suicidal depression she was suffering from.

 Tracey Emin seems to address society’s different identities as well as her own. It seemed to explore the ways in which this work might contain contexts of sexual politics, homelessness and displacement at the end of the twentieth century.  Homelessness in Britain in the 1990’s was a growing problem. With waves of immigrants pouring into Britain during this period, living conditions steadily worsened. As the numbers of asylum seekers were seen to rise, homelessness became a common trend in the 1990’s and a major issue in the late twentieth century. “Shelter”, a charity particularly concerned with homelessness, defines it not just as sleeping rough, but as having access to only temporary, inadequate or unsafe accommodation. Young women are also put in a vulnerable group, at risk of homelessness and sexual predation. This is portrayed in Tracey Emin’s work, “My Bed” seen as an unsafe environment in which to be placed and reflects the identity of the homeless where they themselves cannot find their own personal space.

Barbara Kruger also seems to invoke identity in her work. During the socially troubled decades of the 60’s and 70’s Kruger began to take a deeper interest in the social and political movements of the time, feeling that such issues should be reflected in her designs as well. Kruger's instantly identifiable images explore different themes of power, identity, sexuality, representation and gender roles. Many of her works including “You Are Not Yourself”, question women's roles in our culture. Kruger's work is highly recognizable. She uses simple photographs and enlarges them. She then adds words to the photograph, manipulating the original meaning of the photographs. The theme that runs in most of her work is that she consistently uses black, white and red which makes her work very unique and noticeable. The phrases Kruger chooses juxtaposed the photographs and cause the viewer to question original standards placed before them. In relation to women, Kruger's work causes women to challenge how they are perceived, contradicting the idea that they are often over powered by men and the stereotypes placed by men.  Phrases such as, "You are not yourself" force women to question the changes they must go through to be accepted in our society. Kruger's work forces the audience to look at women’s stereotypical identity, and tries to protest against this idea.

"I work with pictures and words because they have the ability to determine who we are and who we aren't"- Barbara Kruger.

Her work, “You Are Not Yourself” (1982), is very striking. Kruger uses humour in her technique to emphasize a feminist point of view. The words ‘‘you are not yourself’’ are loosely laid over a photograph of a distressed woman looking into a shattered mirror. This is ironic because culture relies on a mirror to reflect reality. This mirror is cracked and without its reassurance, you are not yourself. Existence is questioned without the acknowledgment from the mirror.  Somehow without the recognition of the mirror, both culture and existence are questioned. This then leads to the question why are you not yourself? It is possible that Kruger is indicating that you are not yourself because culture, ruled by the mirror and the media, implies that women should be something they can never be. Kruger has commented on the deceit of the ideal female image portrayed by the media and she revisits the stereotypical female identity in later piece “Super Rich/Ultra Gorgeous/Extra Skinny/Forever Young (1997)”. Kruger expresses female identity in her work and what has been conveyed by society on what women’s identity should be.

Conclusively, Emin and Kruger both demonstrate identity in their work in dissimilar ways. Emin uses her own identity in her work, but has created this piece in such a way that people can relate to it themselves. Kruger has created her piece as a whole outlook on society, which can also let people relate to it. Both seem to provoke the idea of the relationship between society and identity, and how people stereotypically judge each other. Both using powerful methods to entice the audience, I am keen on both artworks, both very simple yet powerful.

Bibliography

http://www.egs.edu/faculty/tracey-emin/articles/tracey-emins-my-bed/

http://www.tfaoi.com/aa/1aa/1aa667.htm

http://www.angelfire.com/ia/tridar/kruger.html

http://www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk/artists/artpages/tracey_emin_my_bed.htm

Assessment task 2: Conceptualising your own work Lisa Honeywood

Lisa Honeywood

Matt Moseley

Word count: 630

                                     My skulls drawings

Leonardo Da Vinci’s “Study of Anatomy”

                                                               

In this essay I will be discussing an artist that has influenced my ideas and work. I will explain why the artist’s work interests me and what I believe are the ideas behind his work and how he expresses them through visual means.

I have chosen my skull drawings, which have been influenced and reflect the work of Leonardo Da Vinci’s “Study of Anatomy”.  The ideas behind his work were simply to record the scientific observations that he had discovered while studying the human anatomy and he was communicating these findings through visual means. This was part of his formal training which began with his apprenticeship to Andrea Del Verrocchio, his teacher insisting that all his pupils studied anatomy. This led to a passion for understanding the make up of the human body which he felt would improve his drawings. Later on therefore, he was given permission to dissect human corpses at the hospital of Santa Maria Nuova in Florence. He also had the opportunity of looking at animal forms.

 Da Vinci’s work interests me because of the way he was not only an artist, but he was also a sculptor, architect, musician, scientist, mathematician and more and used all these skills in his artwork and that he was open to new experiences.  This is shown in his art, with accurate drawings of different studies and records.   I also have an interest in his work because it seems in all his studies he has approached them sensitively and with a lot of expression.  The material he used to create his studies is pencil, which give his drawings a detailed and specific look, making shadowing easier to create and making smaller details easier to sketch.  The techniques that Da Vinci has used on his drawings include cross hatching on big shadowed areas giving the picture a more realistic depth to it. He also uses interesting angles when drawing his skulls, not missing any part of the anatomy.

The skull drawings I have created are influenced by Da Vinci’s work. I have an interest in drawing skulls, because of their composition and form. I also wanted to draw skulls as many artists use this traditional object in their artwork including Picasso’s “Goat’s skull, Bottle and Candle”, Paul Cezanne’s “Pyramid of Skulls” and Damien Hurst’s “For the Love of God” and I felt it would improve my artwork and therefore wanted to create my own original drawings of skulls. Skulls have intriguing shapes and angles on them and they also seem to give the sense of age. I also believe they have an eerie feel to them giving you a sense of wonder of what their life was like, and how they died.  I have tried to create them as observational studies, trying to exaggerate the positions in which I could draw them.  I used simple materials as Da Vinci did, including watercolours, pen and pencil which I think give the most realistic feel to them. I tried adding texture to my work as Da Vinci has created in his studies which give his work a personal “trademark”. Although his work is very scientific, I believe it still has great depth to it. It feels as though he has tried to add an artistic touch; he seems to have real enthusiasm in his work and created several thousand sketches for each study he had produced. This shows his real commitment to his subject.

In conclusion studying Da Vinci’s work has been an inspiration to my own. I will be using his influence in more of my work, particularly the in depth observational drawings.  I will also apply other skills and knowledge in areas other than art into my work.

Analysing and Comparing Two Images Lisa Honeywood

Analysing and Comparing Two Images

Lisa Honeywood

Matt Moseley

Word Count: 592

In this essay I will be analysing and discussing in detail two images. I will be describing the two individually, relating to their context as well as their formal element and expressing my own opinion on their meaning.

The first piece of artwork is Francis Bacon’s “Self Portrait” (Appendix 1), created in 1971. I think his self portraits created in this period of time refer to the suicide of his lover George Dyer in 1971, where his work seems to have a theme of death and depression. The painting is obviously a portrait of him which reflects great emotion and this is expressed in his brushstrokes. These are thick, textured and intense which seem to be symbolic and reflect the emotion in the image of horror and suffering. They also make the image very abstract. In his work he uses dull and dark colours. This creates an eerie atmosphere and makes the audience pay greater attention to the depth of the meaning, rather than the element of the colour. The dark background brings the image forward and makes it the centre of attention. It also intensifies the mood of the whole picture. The face is contorted, twisted, and half shadowed which was seen as shocking and grotesque by many people. It gives a sense of sadness and maybe how Bacon sees himself or how he was feeling in this period of time.  The facial features are enlarged, especially the eyes which are a main focal point. They  are the first thing you see and they seem to show sadness .You can see that he has a glazed look and seems to be looking into the distance which gives the sense that something is on his mind.

Bacon was greatly influenced by Eisenstein's images in his film “Battleship Potemkin”.  He was particularly interested in the Odessa Steps shot of the schoolmistress's broken glasses and open-mouthed scream. You can see the open mouth image first in his Abstraction from the Human Form, in Fragment of a Crucifixion, and other works including his famous Head series. You can clearly see his influence in his self portraits where he continuously referred back to the film for inspiration.

The second piece is a still from “Battleship Potemkin”, created by Eisenstein (Appendix 2) in 1925. It relates to the mutiny that occurred in 1905 during the Tsarist regime when the crew of the Russian battleship Potemkin rebelled against their officers. This image is a close up of a man’s face, which is similar to Bacon’s “Self Portrait”. It is shocking and refers to the suffering and pain of the massacre in the film, just in one snapshot of the face.  The use of no colour in the film is also similar to “Self Portrait”. Using less colour brings out the meaning of the picture. Again, you see the big facial features, particularly the eyes, which are widened. This gives the sense of horror and shock, which is also seen in Francis Bacon’s work. The man’s hair in the image seems wild and untamed, reflecting the chaotic feel of the whole film. There is also a darkened background and a shadowed face which brings him to the centre of attention. You can see the overall theme of shock and horror in this image which has influenced Bacon’s “Self Portrait”.

In conclusion, both works of art have similar aspects showing the same emotion of horror and sadness, and you can see the definite inspiration that Bacon has used from Eisenstein’s film to influence his work.