0013 Subjects I study at Sthildas

Art
English
Maths B
Engineering
Physics
Japanese


Can you see me as an architect?

0012 ALCHEMY in a form of ARTMAKING

In relation to art-making, alchemy is the process of transmutating basic materials of little value into a meaningful art of great worth. It takes a process of synthesising ideas from all dimensions: mental, physical, spiritual and emotional to transform something into a deep and meaningful state. At a physical level, the materials go through the physical alchemical process and become gold. The ability of an artist to use visual language and further physical art-making techniques (like Painting techniques) adds to the physical level of alchemy. From a spiritual level, the artist ponders the concept and focus of the artwork. At a mental level, the artist’s interests andexploration of the conceptual ideas through thinking and researching come to play a role in the creation of the work. And last, at an emotional level, the artist adds mood to the artwork depending on how she feels towards the chosen concept and focus. All artists walk their own sort of such long alchemical path in the form of art-making before they reach their polished product of ‘gold’. The quality of the 'gold' is determined by its ability to start its viewers to experience on a their own physical, mental, spiritual and emotional journey.

0011 Homework Task - Louise Bourgeois, Woven Child

The Woven Child, Louise Bourgeois, 2002

Artist, Louise Bourgeois examples a particular alchemical path she passed.

Louise Bourgeois depicts an archetypal image of a mother and a child in The Woven Child. In the work, the figure of a newborn, held in loosely stitched translucent blue fabric netting, is cradled comfortably on its mother’s stomach. The netting protects the child from the outside world and links it to its mother. Stiffly lying on its back naked, the armless, headless and legless female torso fashioned from white patches roughly stitched together, is ready to feed her foetus with her full prominent nipples. Such sculpture is laid against a very coldly dark, solid background.

Bourgeois reinterprets the archetypal relationship between a mother and child from a unique perspective in her recent sculpture, The Woven Child. Not expressing the mother and the infant as distinctively characterised individuals, but rather, conveying them as universal symbols, Bourgeois focuses on the intangible bonding between the two. With purposeful use of uninteresting lifeless colours for the flesh, stiff position for the torso and faceless infant and mother, the artist was able to achieve her collectiveness in her subjects. Although the womb connects the baby and the mother, the infant seems to be a separated one whole entity. The mother is also emotionless and limbless, unable to kiss or hold her newborn, only being the basis for the baby’s growth. This suggests that from a physical perspective, there is no strong personal bonding between the newborn and the mother. However, as she consciously chose to construct the figures out of fabric, a fragile material not typically used for sculpture, from a intangible perspective, the artist engages a human associations such as warmth, intimacy and vulnerability between the infant and the mother.

In her collective work, Bourgeois explores the psychological and emotional effects of human relations, the intimacies as well as the anxieties. Bourgeois ahs said that she is ‘interested in the portraiture of a relationship… the effect people have on one another.’

In realising (to make real) a concept successfully into a form of tangible aesthetic, Bourgeois passed her process of alchemy in the form of art-making.



Other works by Louise Bourgeois:


















The Woven Child, Louise Bourgeois, 2002



















Spider, Louise Bourgeois, 2003

0010 Homework Task - Jenny Saville, Propped

Propped, Jenny Saville, 1992

In Saville’s Propped, an oversized naked woman is sitting precariously on a high stool, posing very uncomfortably, propped. The woman is peering down at the audience from her gargantuan height with a defiant look. However her unconscious decision of having her hands desperately clutching her thighs and an expression of discomfort on her face suggests embarrassment. This woman, posing in such displeasing way is focused on the centre of the work of an empty background. She is painted from a low angle. The woman’s legs and hands are therefore disproportion-ally exaggerated in a larger scale than her chest and head. Her knees appear to protrude out from the painting, under a veil of text printed over the whole picture plan.

Visual Language:
With exquisite painting techniques, Saville uses symmetrical balance, warm analogous colours and strong tonal contrast (form) to interest the viewers.
(I will expand this paragraph soon)


The frankness of Saville’s un-idealised naked female bodies in her monumental flesh paintings forces the viewers into new perception of woman’s body. Saville explores female bodies stripped bare, denuded of personality and context in her art. In Propped, Saville focuses on the sheer physicality of the woman’s body while giving no importance to the woman’s personality. She does this through allowing a strong tonal contrast on the naked flesh for interest while shadowing and slightly cropping the woman’s face for minute importance. Giving so much importance to the woman’s body, Saville is surely commenting on female’s exterior appearances. With her exaggerated nudes, she points out the disparity between the way women are perceived and the reality of woman’s body appearance. That is, not all female bodies are perfect or are in a shiny idealised way of the media.


Saville passed through her alchemical process in her art-making very successfully and therefore she transformed her base metals into 'gold' of great worth.

Other works by Jenny Saville:

Reverse (2002 - 2003)















Suspension (2002 -2003)


By the way, this little script I found on the internet shows her mental alchemical process:

Saville calls herself a 'scavenger of images;' she prefers to work from photographs rather than living models. Her studio is a repository of images from old medical journals of bruises, scars, images of deformities and disease. On a recent visit to her brother's farm in England, she found and photographed the corpse of a dead pig. The subsequent painting shows its distended stomach splayed across a huge canvas. Reminiscent of the paintings of Chaim Soutine, Saville was drawn to this subject matter because of her interest in the medical world's use of pig organs for human transplant as well as cloning. With Saville's handling, this potentially revolting subject is disturbing yet glorious.

http://www.gagosian.com/artists/jenny-saville

0009 My Multiple Intelligence Graph

My strong area: Intrapersonal, Visual/Spatial, Logical
My week area: Naturalistic and Linguistic!!

I so knew about this result

0008 "Faces" 2007 Term 3 photoshopped version

I look like a frowning white ghost!

0007 "Pain" 2007 Term 3

I didn't really expect this smooth, soft textural effect with such warm analygous colours when I took the photos,

I really like this effect!!!