Unit X - Superstitions

Research + Exhibitions - David Bowie Is

The Victoria and Albert Museum is currently showing an exhibition on the life, times and works of David Bowie. This exhibition is something i've been following during its set up and have been desperate to see. I managed to get tickets and went to see the exhibition (Wednesday 3rd April 2013)

Before seeing this exhibition, I wasn't a huge of a Bowie, music wise, as it was a bit before my time. However, I have always been interested in his style and personas, with celebs now taking inspiration, from Lady Gaga to Kate Moss to Noel Fielding. This just shows how relevant Bowie was and still is now.

 The exhibition itself featured everything and anything you would want to see about Bowies life. Walking round, you started from Bowie as a child/teen then all the way through his Ziggy Stardust era. The V&A displayed costumes and outfits that Bowie wore on stage and during photo shoots, handwritten lyrics, paintings, photographs and videos of interviews with Bowie and his friends and even artwork that Bowie had created himself (something I never knew before looking around the exhibition). 

What I really loved about the exhibition is how much I actually learnt walking round, each piece of memorabilia had a story to tell you about why it was relevant and the back story behind it. Each costume had the designer and influences, some even having the sketches of ideas from Bowie and the designers. This was very interesting as you could see how Bowies mind worked and how much time he spent putting effort into his costumes and keeping up the different characters he took on. 

The room that was most fascinating was the main room, which featured three huge screens, the size of the room, each playing stage performances from different stages in Bowies career. Behind these screens were mannequins each in their own box, showing the different, most famous, costumes of Bowies, only being visible and certain times throughout the performance. As soon I entered the room, I was instantly stopped in my tracks. The sheer volume of the room and screens was one reason but what was most amazing was the amount of people in the room, all watching the same performance ('Life on Mars' live) and how each person was instantly connected to this man. There were people of all ages watching the performance, from the people who remember Bowie in his prime or people like me, who are just learning about Bowie and his unusual style. I have never had a feeling like that when entering an exhibition before.

Overall, the 'David Bowie Is' exhibition is one of the best exhibitions I have ever seen, not only for the fact there has never been one like this before, but for the sheer volume of information and different objects on display. The exhibition was so busy, that it took three hours to get round, this just goes to shows how much of an influence Bowie still has. 

Unit X - Susperstitions

Research + Exhibitions - Roy Lichtenstein

This is an exhibitions I have been waiting to see for a long time. I have seen a few painting of Lichtenstein's but never as many as a full exhibition. I have been a huge fan of Lichtenstein since my GCSE'S. Lichtenstein's work was the first i was introduced to when learning how to drawn and about the different types of art. I have always been fascinatedby his style of work, about how it looks so graphic and animated but instead, it's a perfectly drawn out painting.

When looking through Lichtenstein's work, some had no glass case so you could view them up close, I was actually surprised to see how messy some of his work is, having always thought they were perfectly finished off. However when looking close, you could see the original pencil marks left underneath the paint, the dots smudged where his hand caught them and the paint drag lines on the canvas. This is something you would only see close up. As well as the untidiness, I noticed how bright the colours were. The paint was so smooth and even on the canvas which made the colour just pop. Throughout the pop art movement, Lichtenstein started using a stencil to create the dots, drilling into pieces of metal then using it as a stencil, instead of painstakingly painting each dot. You can see on the paintings, where he has dotted the whole canvas, then panting the picture over the top. 

  

What I found most unusual and quite unnerving, was the nudes that Licht
enstein created before his death in 1997. Lichtenstein did not use live model when creating this, but instead he used old comic book drawings of women and imagined them naked and worked from that. I found this a very weird method of working and I don't think it worked very well. His models looked very rigid and scary, there faces had no emotion or no movement in their bodies. They looked wooden and lifeless. 

The exhibition was set out in the different stages of Lichtenstein's life, starting from his famous pop art, to his then nudes. The exhibition was almost like walking through his art-life, seeing how his technique changed and the topics and influences changed. The paintings changed from bright, powerful, large pop art canvases to small tranquil landscape paintings.  

Unit X - Superstitions

Research + Exhibitions - Kurt Schwitters

During the time I spent in London, I decided to try and see as many different exhibitions as possible. The first one I when to see was 'Kurt Schwitters In Britain' at the Tate Britain. I was quite excited to see this exhibition as, during my A-Levels, I focused a lot on Schwitters method of working. 

  What I found interesting about the way the exhibition was set out was the contrast between all the different types of work Schwitters created. The works changed from his well known collages of scrap paper to very intricate paint portraits of his friends.  Schwitters mainly focused on his past in his work, escaping from numerous concentration camps in Nazi Germany. This is something that is very evident in his work, from the German text, to the ration books that were distributed throughout the war. In later life when Schwitters moved to the country, he was sent different types of materials from his friends, from old letters to stamps, which he then incorporated into his work. 

Overall, I found this exhibition quite exciting, as some of the work on display, I had never seen before as well as very fascinating stories about Schwitters life displayed all around the gallery. 

Unit X - Superstitions

Conspiracies 

My area of research has been focused on 'conspiracies'. I have really thrown myself into the research as conspiracy theories are something i've always been interested in previously. Looking through lots of websites, I found many different theories, ranging from unknown and unusual ones, for example the royals being man-eating lizard people from the fourth dimension to very common, well know ones such as Princess Diana being murdered. One of the most famous conspiracies i've began to focus more on is the 'Paul McCartney is dead' theory. This theory has been around since the early 1970s. I am finding the research and work very fascinating and it is sparking a lot of ideas.  

I find the theory of 'Paul is dead' very convincing. The Beatles include clues in their music and artwork, forcing people to go looking for the clues. I am really enjoying combing through all the different album artworks to see the clues for myself.

To further my study into the Beatles and Paul McCartney, I intend to look at the history and culture at the time this rumour began to circulate, 1970s. Paul McCartney was such a huge influence on men and women, that this makes the idea of the theory so much more interesting. 

Unit X - Superstitions

These are some scans that I have taken from my research notebook. In my group I was in charge of Conspiracies. This is something I have always been interested in. My first part of the research is just looking into conspiracies in general, the most famous ones, and the most obscure ones. Looking through all the different ideas, there is almost a conspiracy for everything and everyone. 

I am trying to build a body of research, evidence and contextual knowledge before I start my project. i believe this will help me in my brief. 

Unit X - Superstitions

Unit X - Research

  When first introduced to the idea of group work during our time in 'Unit X' I was very skeptical about working collaboratively with people from diffferent areas and people who are new to me. The brief was introduced to us as '175', which is the anniversary of the art school. On my own I brainstormed about the number, I tried to think about different ways to interpret the number, for example, 175 steps taken on a journey, 175 pages in a book, 175 pictures and faces. However nothing was sparking excitement, then I realised that I was taking the number and trying to come up with a abstract idea, when really I should have treated it like a number. I decided to add them together (1+7+5=13), this was my idea. The number 13 is something that has so many meanings and tangents that I could go down. This is something I shared with my group and we began brainstorming ideas to do with superstitions. Each person taking a topic, for example mine is conspiracies. This will build the base of our research. The joining back together, and sharing back all the research and facts we have gathered, therefor creating one huge block of research. 

Unit X - Superstitions

Glam; The Performance Of Style

During feedback week, I decided to visit the Liverpool Tate to see the current exhibition 'Glam; The Performance of Style'. This exhibition which demonstrates the era of 'Glam' throughout the UK and USA.

I was very excited to visit this exhibition as I have always been very intrigued by the fashion that was popular at the time. I loved the different topics that the exhibition covered, spanning from the music which was popular at the time, David Bowie and Brian Eno to the sinister erotic art that Andy Warhol and Allen Jones created. What I found interesting when looking round was how free people were becoming at the time. The 70s became the year of a change in culture. Fashion became more risky and unusual with Ziggy Stardust becoming a huge influence on people, of which they had never really seen before. The mystery of sex became a less taboo subject, women became free, dressing how they felt and drag queens becoming more and more common.

What I found most unusual was the idea of sex and eroticsism. The art by Allen Jones, which focused on women being manipulated into furniture. When seeing this piece of work in the gallery, I instantly felt uncomfortable and confused by this piece of work. The women are made life size, which adds to the realism of the piece. At first i did not understand this piece of work, but having time to think about this piece of work I think it discusses the idea of women in the home, still being in her traditional role of the home-maker (cooking, cleaning, looking after the children) or 'being part of the furniture' but giving her the freedom of sex and power over her body. However, as you can see, she still cannot escape the role of 'part of the furniture' almost saying that a woman can have this power and freedom but only in her own home.

Overall, I thought the exhibition was very interesting and included a variety of different media, from magazines, to posters to performances covering the most important changes during the time, summing up the 1970s in a very exciting and educational way.